OLD AND BUSTED: Is Paris Burning?

The New Hotness? When Isn’t Paris Burning? Paris is a city afraid.

This year what was once the [New Year’s Eve] celebration has been reduced to a simulation. Paris must now film a celebration in advance because it cannot trust itself to manage a real one. The city that staged the Olympics cannot handle a national holiday. Paris, a capital that used to defy threats, can no longer manage its crowds.

In recent years [the Champs Élysées] has become the predictable destination for trouble. Large groups stream in from the suburbs on major nights and the pattern repeats itself. Burning scooters. Smash and grab attacks on luxury shops. Running fights with police. Dozens of arrests. Last year there were more than two hundred in Paris alone. Television networks keep a running tally of the number of cars torched across the country. During the Champions League celebrations this summer there were hundreds.

The French state understands all of this. The problem has only gotten worse with the transport reform which cuts the price of public transport for residents of the suburbs while raising them for travel within central Paris itself. Presented as ‘social justice’, it makes it cheaper than ever for huge numbers to surge into the centre from the suburbs on major nights. Parisians now pay more to move around central Paris, while the journey in from the suburbs has never been more affordable. The consequences are obvious. The city and the police are no longer willing to face them.

France spent billions on Olympic security and deployed an army of police officers. The fireworks will still take place at midnight, but they will rise over a boulevard the authorities no longer consider safe for real celebration. The city knows where the pressure lies. It knows who floods into the avenue on nights like these. It knows how quickly things can turn.

Massive understatement alert: “France’s open-door policies have had consequences.”