Macron refuses minister’s resignation after huge protests rock France – Europe live

in Palermo Italian police also clashed with protesters who threw stones and looted shops in Milan on Sunday during demonstrations over the rising cost of living, as lorry drivers blocked roads across southern Italy in protest at soaring fuel prices linked to the war in Iran.

Footage showed police in riot gear firing teargas and using water cannon after several hundred hooded protesters smashed shop windows and set bins alight in the area around Piazza del Duomo in central Milan.

The clashes echoed scenes of violence in neighbouring France, where hundreds of thousands of people angered by rising living costs and declining public services took to the streets on Saturday in some of the country’s most violent protests in years. Meanwhile, lorry drivers have caused widespread disruption across southern Italy, blocking major roads and creating huge traffic jams in Sicily, Puglia and Calabria in protest at the mounting financial pressure on the haulage industry.

French president Emmanuel Macron has declined interior minister Laurent Nuñez’s offer to resign after widespread riots over the weekend, despite “failures in anticipation and intelligence” that were deemed to worsen the crisis engulfing the country. Macron said Nuñez should stay to ‌ensure a chain of command is retained within the police and security forces, and has also asked Nuñez to set up ‌as quickly as possible new approaches to deal with looters, the Élysée Palace added, quoted by Reuters. Macron has asked the minister to “put in place new operational methods for security forces” to get a grip over the crisis. Saturday, one of the most violent days of unrest in years, left public buildings burned, hundreds of shops destroyed and looted and at least 2,400 people arrested in cities across the country. In a TV interview on Monday, Nuñez admitted that the police “lost control” in some cities during the protests.

In an address to the nation last night, Macron criticised “unbridled vio

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