Louvre blocked in support of the student movement

The museum could not open as scheduled on Monday because of the protest, which organisers staged in support of the student movement and to denounce police repression. A leaflet handed out at the entrances made the aim plain.

The blockade came after weeks of high school student demonstrations, six months before a presidential election and amid mounting economic pressures. Saturday's marches by students, teachers, parents, unions and workers focused on the high cost of living, and similar demonstrations took place in Italy, Belgium and Albania over the weekend.

Interior minister's radio admission

Nuñez conceded on Monday that police "lost control" in some cities during the violent weekend protests. On French radio he said: "You couldn't look shopkeepers in the eye after hundreds of shops had been looted and say we hadn't lost control".

He acknowledged a lack of anticipation in the preparations for Saturday's protests and that police numbers had sometimes been inadequate to deal with the rioters and looters on the fringes of the demonstrations. The intelligence failure was stark: services had predicted around 200,000 demonstrators nationwide, but more than 500,000 turned out. Some 60,000 police and other security forces were deployed around the country, yet Nuñez said this was not enough in cities including Paris, Marseille and Lyon. He also said the responsibility of "rioters, looters and ultra-left militants" should not be glossed over.

The weekend's cost in numbers

The damage and the human toll were extensive, according to the authorities:

• •An estimated 2,000 shops were ransacked and looted, and public buildings including a town hall were attacked and set ablaze.
• •Nearly 2,400 people were arrested, 70% of them adults, and almost 1,000 police and gendarmes were injured.
• •Rioting and looting continued on Sunday, with about 30 shops targeted in Paris and a further 350 people arrested overnight, according to the capital's mayor, Emmanuel Grégoire.

Grégoire said: "Maintaining public order is the responsibility of the state. It is the state that was at fault this weekend". In Marseille, mayor Benoît Payan said not just democracy but "the very foundations of the Republic" had been undermined, described the situation as "almost insurrectional" and called the government's stance "petty political manoeuvring".

What the government ordered next

President Emmanuel Macron demanded a full security review and "new operational methods" to end the rioting and looting. In a televised address on Sunday he criticised the "unbridled" violence and said local authorities would be able to ban some demonstrations in the coming days, though he stopped short of drastic measures such as a state of emergency or curfew.

Macron also ordered Nuñez to take all necessary steps to ensure transparency over the planning and intelligence failures, and his office said the interior minister was tasked with "promptly implementing new operational methods for security forces to use on the ground in combating rioters". Nuñez had tendered his resignation because he felt responsible for everything that happened; Macron refused it. Justice minister Gérald Darmanin said there was no good policing without good intelligence, noting that many of those arrested had police records and about 80% were being prosecuted.

Grégoire, meanwhile, warned that the protests would continue. "We have a social movement that is spreading, and no political prospect for a constructive way out. So the protests will continue," she said.