'Deeply regressive': How the French government plans to make protesters pay for riots and looting

You’ve seen the images by now. The grey husks of cars staining the asphalt with soot. The gutted boutiques spilling their wares onto the street to be snatched up by eager hands. The fires licking the ribs of burning barricades, reaching higher and higher into the skies over Paris. The charred belfry of the Limoges town hall falling into the building’s blazing bowels. Although the overwhelming majority of the public demonstrations against the rising cost of living that swept France on October 17 unfolded peacefully, the riots and looting that broke out on the margins of many of the street marches left the country reeling. While the costs are still being tallied, France’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry has said that almost 2,500 businesses were damaged over the weekend, with more than a thousand of those ransacked, looted or set on fire. The free-market IFRAP Foundation has estimated the nationwide costs at not far short of a billion euros. Hammered on all sides by accusations that it had badly bungled its role in ensuring public order in the face of mass demonstrations, the French government has brought forward a draft bill that would make protesters liable to pay up to €10,000 fo...