You’ve already seen the images. The gray husks of cars that stain the asphalt with soot. Vandalized boutiques spill their wares onto the street for eager hands to snatch. Fires licked the ribs of the burning barricades and rose higher and higher into the skies of Paris. The burned-out bell tower of Limoges town hall falls into the bowels of the building. Although the overwhelming majority of the public demonstrations against the rising cost of living that swept France on October 17 took place peacefully, the rioting and looting that broke out on the sidelines of many of the street marches left the country reeling. While the costs are still being tallied, the French Chamber of Commerce and Industry has said nearly 2,500 businesses were damaged over the weekend, with more than a thousand of them looted, looted or burned. The IFRAP Foundation, a supporter of the free market, has estimated the costs nationwide at no less than one billion euros. Hit from all sides by accusations that it had seriously squandered its role in ensuring public order in the face of mass demonstrations, the French government has introduced a bill that would force protesters to pay up to 10,000 euros for damage caused during public demonstrations, even if they were not responsible for it. French Senate debates new ‘rioters pay’ bill To display this YouTube content, you must enable ad tracking and audience measurement. OK Manage my options One of your browser extensions appears to be blocking the video player from loading. To view this content, you may need to disable it on this site. Try again Cover image: BUSINESS © FRANCE 24 The law to “make troublemakers pay” was approved on Wednesday in the right-dominated Senate and will now be debated in the more divided National Assembly. Although its final form has yet to be determined, the bill has already sparked protests from human rights organizations, labor unions and left-wing political parties in France, who say the bill as it stands today would be an outright assault on the fundamental right to peaceful protests. Other legal experts have also questioned the need for such a law. Laurent Caruso, a criminal defense lawyer and member of the Commission on Freedoms and Human Rights of the National Bar Council, said the French criminal justice system already had ways of making people pay for the damage they had caused during the riots. “If you have committed a crime, you may face criminal penalties or have to pay a fine, and the fact that you have committed a crime may mean that you may be required to pay for the damage you have caused, the destruction and all the resulting consequences,” he said. “So this mechanism already exists: when you are responsible for something, you pay.” Masked protesters stand next to burnt bicycles amid clashes during a demonstration against cost of living and rising fuel prices in Paris on October 17, 2026. © Jack Taylor, Reuters But putting a name and a face to the individuals responsible for the worst property damage after rioters have been driven off the streets is no easy task. To this end, the bill targets not only people convicted of theft or destruction of property, but also people who have “knowingly participated” in a group formed expressly to carry out acts of vandalism. The law would also apply to people who have remained at public gatherings even after police have twice ordered them to disperse. “Under this bill, the idea is to expand the group of people who could be held responsible: people who, although they may not necessarily have participated in something, are responsible for it,” Caruso said. “And the goal seems to be that, since it’s sometimes difficult to identify the people responsible, we’re going to widen the circle of people who could be held responsible, and we’re going to make one or the other pay. It doesn’t matter if you’re not really responsible: you’ll still pay for what everyone else did, because you shouldn’t have been there in the first place.” Read more ‘I didn’t know it was a robbery’: Trials begin in Paris after October 17 violence The bill as it stands raises uncomfortable questions. If the person next to you at a peaceful march starts scribbling slogans at the nearest bus stop, are you now considered part of a group of vandals? How far would you have to distance yourself from them before you are no longer financially responsible for your actions? Would you have to abandon the protest completely? In fact, how long do you have to leave a demonstration once the police have given the order to disperse before you are legally responsible for everything that follows? As anyone who has fought their way through a crowd of people cornered on all sides by armed riot police can tell you, it’s not always as easy as the bill would suggest. It is for these reasons that the bill has come under heavy criticism from human rights groups. Amnesty International warned that the law would be “a deeply regressive step” for France. Two of France’s main labor unions, the General Confederation of Labor and the French Democratic Confederation of Labor, on Thursday condemned the bill as a profound threat to the fundamental right to nonviolent protest. A man walks past a burnt-out car on a street, a day after clashes during a national day of demonstrations against the cost of living and rising fuel prices, in Paris, France, October 18, 2026. © Stéphanie Lecocq, Reuters Caruso said the uncertainty generated by the bill seemed specifically designed to make would-be protesters think twice before joining a peaceful street march. “The direct consequence is that this is a law that destroys freedom and infringes civil liberties, because it is a direct attack on freedom of demonstration,” he stated. “And the goal is precisely to discourage people from having to deal with these types of situations, given that the State is a little overwhelmed at the moment.” Read moreFrance faces a clash with public order policing after a weekend of violent protests. He warned that the law’s broad wording left it open to arbitrary application or even abuse by the police charged with enforcing it. “There is also the risk of discrimination: if you are a white man in a suit and tie participating in a march, you may not be at much risk, but if you are a young man from the housing estates, it is easier to be picked out in the crowd,” he said. “So there is a risk that this is arbitrary, and this is the murky nature of the law, and that is dangerous.” Those who fear the bill represents little less than collective punishment also point to provisions that would see people’s social benefits confiscated to cover the cost of damage caused during outbreaks of street violence. Financial assistance for low-income households, housing assistance and the minimum income to which France’s poorest are also entitled could be partially eliminated to cover the costs of damaged properties. Caruso said social benefits had long been prohibited under French law. “Tomorrow, if we take away benefits from one family, their entire family could end up paying for something they may not even have done,” he said. “And here I think we are taking things too far in the way we approach this issue. Legally, it is not possible; for one thing, it is not fair, it is not morally right, but also, it is completely out of compliance with the law.” The destroyed interior of La Barrique restaurant, the day after clashes during a national day of demonstrations against the cost of living and rising fuel prices, near the Place de la République in Paris, France, October 18, 2026. © Abdul Saboor, Reuters As the heat in the Senate grew hotter, French Communist Party senator Fabien Gay pointed out that deducting 57 euros each month from a family receiving the proposed minimum income It would take 14 years to reach the €10,000 threshold set by the bill. If the 30,000 euro threshold of the far-right National Rally party (RN) became law, it would take families 44 years to pay for the damages. Senator RN Edwige Díaz was unfazed. “To those who tell us that we are taking money from disadvantaged people, I say: don’t worry,” he said. “We will give them the opportunity to pay it forward for the rest of their lives.” The once-unheard-of suggestion to withdraw welfare benefits from families whose members have been found responsible for shop windows that others have broken is also based on an inconvenient truth: that many of those convicted of property destruction during civil unrest simply do not have the means to pay for the damage they have caused. “It’s hard to take money from someone who doesn’t have it, and in that situation, there aren’t many options,” Caruso said. “From a criminal law point of view, there are penalties such as performing community service without pay; this benefits the community and is a way of making some kind of social reparation for crimes, as long as they are not too serious, of course. But otherwise, with someone who has no money, it is still difficult to make them pay, other than chasing them through the legal system until they have money, they are working and we can receive money to compensate for what happened.” But he stressed that opposition to the bill was not motivated by a desire to protect looters from legal consequences, but rather the opposite: to ensure that those consequences did not fall on the shoulders of people who had not participated in the type of riots that broke out on October 17. “As lawyers, we are not in favor of leniency or impunity,” he said. “It is fair that people be punished for breaking the law, but it must be done in accordance with the most basic legal principles, without undermining civil liberties as they exist in our country, and that, in our view, is a red line that should not be crossed.”