French politicians have warned about the risk posed by the country’s increasingly violent and toxic rows over immigration after the mayor of a seaside town resigned following death threats and an arson attack on his home, and far-right groups protested over an asylum-seeker centre in his town.
Yannick Morez announced he was stepping down as mayor of Saint-Brevin-les-Pins, in western France, and would have to stop his work as a local doctor, weeks after his home was targeted in an arson attack that burned two cars and the front of his family house. The arson attack is under investigation, but Morez complained of a “lack of support from the state”.
Saint-Brevin, a seaside town at the mouth of the Loire River near the western city of Nantes, had for months faced protests against plans to move existing, state-run, asylum-seeker accommodation to a site close to a primary school. But locals said the protesters were mainly from outside the town. The demonstrations were largely organised by the Reconquête movement of the former TV pundit and failed presidential candidate Éric Zemmour.
Morez said in March there had “never been the slightest problem” with asylum seekers in the many years they had been hosted in his town. Saint-Brevin first welcomed asylum seekers in 2016, when a notorious, sprawling shantytown near Calais on France’s north coast was dismantled and people who had been hoping to stow away on lorries to reach England were instead rehoused across France.
Emmanuel Macron denounced the attacks on Morez as “outrageous”. The prime minister, Élisabeth Borne, said the case was “very shocking” and showed “a rise in extremism” in France “on both sides”. This caused anger on the left, as Socialist politicians said Borne was putting the far right and the left in the same category.
Aurore Bergé, the head of the parliamentary group of Macron’s centrist party, Renaissance, said: “As soon as you talk of immigration in France, everything becomes tense and a little different.”
Macron has promised a new law on immigration by the summer, but there is confusion and political rowing over how to present it and uncertainty over how it could pass when Macron’s centrists have no absolute majority in parliament. It remains to be seen whether the new law could simplify providing legal papers to undocumented workers in jobs where there are labour shortages, as the government initially intended.
Polling by BVA for the Jean Jaurès thinktank last month found that 69% of French people felt there were “too many immigrants in France”, a six-point increase in five years.
Support for the far right has increased across France, where Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration National Rally is now the biggest opposition party in parliament. Other parties are seeking to channel anti-immigration feeling in an increasingly tense and polarised political environment.
Politicians on the left attacked the government for failing to protect Morez and defend asylum-seeker centres. The Socialist party head, Olivier Faure, tweeted: “It’s shameful that the state did not grasp the scale of what was happening to [Morez] and did not back him up. It’s shameful to continue normalising the far right.”
Raphaël Glucksmann, an MEP, said: “This is a disaster, a triumph of hatred and far-right violence against the humanism of the republic.
Le Pen, whose party is focusing on its parliamentary presence ahead of the 2027 presidential race and attempting to distance itself from the street demonstrations and rallies of small far-right groups, has not commented on Morez’s resignation. But lawmakers on the left criticised Le Pen’s party for not joining other lawmakers in standing up in parliament to pay their respects to Morez after his resignation.
The government is under pressure over street marches and demonstrations by far-right groups and white supremacist groups after a controversial rally in Paris this week. The Socialist senator David Assouline told the government: “It’s unacceptable to have allowed 500 neo-Nazis and fascists to parade in the heart of Paris.”
The interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, said he had asked police chiefs to ban all future far-right extremist rallies, adding that it would be up to courts to determine if they could be held.
