French Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin said Tuesday the country must toughen punishments for public disorder offenses after the rioting that followed Paris Saint-Germain’s historic Champions League victory on Saturday.
Darmanin said the first penalties meted out for those convicted of rioting on Monday were not “commensurate” with the violence seen after the match, which led to more than 550 arrests — including 490 in Paris alone. Two people were reportedly killed during the unrest, though authorities have not definitively tied either death to the football chaos.
While Darmanin said he has full confidence in French magistrates, he said “the law must be radically reformed” in a post on X.
The justice minister, a tough-on-crime conservative, floated several proposals, though they have yet to be fully fleshed out. He called for abolishing mandatory sentence adjustments, which requires judges to find alternative arrangements to prison for shorter sentences, and instituting a mandatory three-month prison term served behind bars for “any attack on a representative of the state.”
The type of measures floated by Darmanin would likely need to be changed via new legislation, and, despite the rightward shift of France’s politics in recent years, it’s not a given that lawmakers would back the proposals.
However, as he lays the groundwork for a likely presidential run in 2027, Darmanin has been more vocal about increasing punishments for criminals and beefing up prisons. During a trip to the French overseas territory of Guiana last month, he announced that authorities were building a high-security prison for convicted drug traffickers in the middle of the Amazon jungle.
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