Macron tells mayors the 'peak' of riots has passed but remains 'cautious'
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Transcript
00:00 24's Cluvis Casali is at the Elysee Palace. He joins me now on the line.
00:05 Cluvis, then, give us an idea what's this meeting about, what are the mayors going
00:09 to tell Macron? Well the meeting has started with an address by President
00:16 Emmanuel Macron who told the mayors here at the Elysee Palace that the peak of
00:21 the riots is now behind us. He also expressed his full support and said that
00:27 he is going to be working towards finding solutions, deep solutions to
00:34 these problems in the most impoverished parts of the country with the riots of
00:40 course hitting suburbs in Paris but also in other major cities such as Lyon,
00:47 Marseille, Bordeaux but also, and that's new, in smaller towns and that's very
00:53 different from the riots say of 2005. We spoke to mayors here who tell us they
01:00 want answers and they want more help from the French authorities. They felt
01:05 let down during these past few days of riots, notably having to mobilize their
01:11 own local police as national forces weren't available to help contain the
01:16 violence, bring back peace and that's the situation the mayors we've been talking
01:22 to want to tell Emmanuel Macron. The Elysee Palace is telling us that this is a
01:27 friendly informal moment where he's here to listen to the mayors of the worst hit
01:35 towns and cities of France after these days of violence that have shocked
01:40 everyone here in France. Now it does look, Clovis, as if the violence is abating
01:46 somewhat. How has this impacted Macron and his government?
01:53 Well interesting to see that the whole government is at work here at the Elysee
01:59 Palace. You have Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, the Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti
02:03 as well of course as the French president here for this moment
02:08 with the mayors. President Emmanuel Macron was overnight in a police station
02:12 of the 17th arrondissement of Paris again to hear what police forces had to say
02:18 and to say thank you to them for their work done day and night over the past
02:24 few days to contain the violence. Of course these fierce clashes between
02:29 rioters and police forces, often very young rioters. A third of the arrests are
02:35 minors, teenagers who've been taken to the streets at night mostly setting fire
02:42 to cars, burning down town halls, trying to attack police stations and also
02:49 schools and that's worrying of course for the people in these suburbs because
02:52 they're the worst affected also. If the rioters burn down all those public
02:56 buildings, installations, well those people are the worst affected and that's
03:00 why we've been witnessing scenes where you have parents taking to the streets
03:04 telling these children, these teenagers should I say, stop doing this, stop the
03:08 violence. It's completely counterproductive. We understand that
03:12 you're angry at the killing of 17 year old Nahel but you need to stop spreading
03:18 violence and that's also of course the message for instance of the French
03:21 football team, Kylian Mbappe and others in the past days are calling for peace,
03:27 calling for the calm to return. Okay well we'll leave it there. Thanks very much
03:31 for that Clovis. Clovis Kassali there speaking to us from outside the
03:36 Elysee Palace.