Retailers in France and Italy Tally the Cost of Lost Business After Second Round of Protests

PARIS — Hunker down.

At a time when Christmas lights have started appearing in London, retailers in France and Italy boarded up their stores and curtailed opening hours on Saturday in preparation for another day of major protests, following the previous weekend’s demonstrations during which thousands of stores were damaged or looted.

Although Saturday’s marches in both countries were mostly peaceful, with isolated pockets of violence, the retail sector was left tallying the cost of lost business in the runup to the crucial holiday season — not to mention additional expenses linked to increased security measures. The lost business came on top of the costs of repairing the damages from the Oct. 17 marches.

“Compared with last Saturday, yesterday was a relief. But the precautions taken to protect shops and their staff are having an impact on business,” Judith Jiguet, executive director of the French Retail Federation, said in a statement Sunday.

“Shutting shop or erecting barricades cannot become the new normal. Retailers are essential to the life of our town centers: They must be able to rely on the public authorities to ensure their safety,” the executive added.

The federation, whose members include Galeries Lafayette Group, sporting goods retailer Decathlon and supermarket chains including Carrefour, E.Leclerc and Monoprix, said it remained “particularly vigilant” ahead of Nov. 5, when French unions have called for nationwide strikes.

Apple closed all three of its Paris stores on Saturday, but LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton said it planned business as usual. On the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, roughly half the stores were protected by metal curtains or chipboard panels.

Printemps shuttered its store in Lille and shortened opening hours elsewhere, with the Nation branch in the east of Paris closing at 3 p.m., while the Boulevard Haussmann flagship shut 30 minutes early at 7:30 p.m., a spokeswoman said. Printemps stores in Marseille, Rouen, Nancy and Lyon also closed earlier than usual.

Galeries Lafayette kept all its locations running, but with limited opening hours in Rennes, Perpignan, Caen, Toulon, Bordeaux, Clermont-Ferrand, Nantes and Toulouse, a spokeswoman said.

Bring Back Order

Authorities were determined to avoid a repeat of the scenes of chaos that unfolded on Oct. 17, deploying 70,000 police officers and gendarmes, Sentinelle military personnel and elite commandos such as the RAID and GIGN, in addition to helicopters and armored vehicles.

Protests were banned in several cities, including Lyon and Marseille, while in Paris, the route of the main demonstration organized by the CGT union was changed at the last moment, with the police prefecture citing the need to protect retailers.

Those on the revised itinerary, which snaked from the south to the east of the French capital, were left scrambling to secure their storefronts.

Videos shot by local residents showed a flood of people stretching for miles, with the crowd estimated at 250,000 by the CGT and 110,000 by the Interior Ministry. Nationwide, the number of participants totaled 800,000 according to the union, or 410,000 according to police, slightly down from the previous week.

As the procession arrived on the Cours de Vincennes to the east of Paris in the late afternoon, a group of 500 violent “troublemakers” clashed with police, the Interior Ministry reported. They hurled projectiles including glass bottles, and police responded with tear gas and water cannons.

On Sunday morning, as joggers and families returned to the neighborhood, there were few visible signs of the clashes, except for scores of graffitied slogans on walls and tram shelters, including one that read “Macron Resign.”

Anger has mounted against President Emmanuel Macron’s administration over conditions in public schools and the soaring cost of living. Violent clashes were also recorded on Saturday in Lyon, Rennes, Nantes, Bordeaux, Nice and Marseille.

Nationwide, “several” stores were damaged and 24 looted, compared with the 1,522 businesses affected the previous week, the Interior Ministry said in a statement Sunday. Police made 1,314 arrests, down from 2,628 the previous week.

Trade Minister Serge Papin estimated more than 3,000 stores were damaged or looted on Oct. 17. In Paris alone, local authorities had tallied 451 vandalized retailers, including 228 stores that were stripped bare, ranging from mom-and-pop groceries to luxury boutiques.

Controversial Advice

Papin sought to reassure the sector in the runup to the second weekend of demonstrations. “To the shopkeepers listening this morning, I want to say: you can be confident that order will be restored by the 24th,” he told financial news channel BFM Business on Wednesday.

Despite this, Paris police chief Patrice Faure advised store owners to take precautionary measures, including closing or shortening their working hours, barricading windows, removing any external objects that might be used as projectiles and, if possible, hiring private security.

The latter suggestion raised the ire of politicians including David Lisnard, president of the Association of French Mayors, who called it “an unacceptable admission of powerlessness” on the part of the authorities.

“Shopkeepers pay for the repairs and pay taxes so that the state can ensure their security — yet they are now expected to pay a third time for private security,” he wrote on X.

“Unable to fulfill this basic duty, the state is asking them to pay security companies. More costs, and therefore less income, at a difficult time. And the same injustice remains: The first victims will be those on the lowest incomes, who cannot afford this protection,” he added.

Faure responded by apologizing for a “clumsy” expression of support for retailers.

“Protecting shopkeepers and their premises is the state’s responsibility. We will not shirk our responsibilities. The preventive and deterrent measures recommended to shopkeepers are intended to complement this action, not replace it,” he stated on X.

In the wake of the Oct. 17 violence, Faure ordered the creation of a task force of 200 investigators charged with bringing vandals and looters to justice.

“They are pursuing every lead available to them, including social media, CCTV footage and forensic evidence. We shall not rest,” he said.

The police boss also ordered a nightly curfew in sensitive areas, including Place de la République and the Les Halles district, home to the Westfield Forum des Halles shopping center.

Milan on Alert

Tension built up also in Italy, specifically in Milan, where last weekend student-led protests over the rising cost of living, inflation and access to education were marred by widespread unrest in downtown as several hundred hooded individuals joined and took advantage of the demonstrations to loot shops and businesses.

On Friday, many retailers in town already started to barricade their stores as threats of new protests spread on social media throughout the week. These included stores mainly located in central high-traffic shopping areas including luxury’s Golden Triangle, the Duomo and San Babila Squares, thoroughfares Corso Vittorio Emanuele II and Via Torino.

Despite Mayor Giuseppe Sala’s exhortation to stay open, some key businesses opted for an early closing on Saturday, including the Rinascente department store overlooking the Duomo cathedral that shut its doors at 3 p.m.

Others — spanning from Adidas to Levi’s — applied signs that they were open over the plywood panels protecting their windows to encourage shoppers to step in.

Law enforcement was heavily deployed to contain potential upheaval, but there were no new episodes of looting on Saturday, when about 10,000 protesters gathered in a peaceful demonstration in Milan.

Clashes with police were registered in other Italian cities, however, including Turin, Bologna and Rome, where roughly 50 students among the 4,000 protesters temporarily broke into the Colosseum. In Florence, law enforcement clashed with those trying to access the luxury shopping street Via Tornabuoni.

Marco Barbieri, general secretary of the Confcommercio Milano trade confederation, estimated that the damage to stores and commercial activities in Milan from the first weekend of clashes totaled more than 1 million euros, between structural damages and missed sales due to the early closing of businesses.

“It seems that reason has prevailed in Milan,” Barbieri said on Saturday.

“The senseless vandalism that wreaked havoc on the city center last weekend has not been repeated. As we have always said, demonstrating in a civil manner is a sacrosanct and inviolable right — one that stands in direct opposition to violence. We thank the public institutions, law enforcement, and the military for managing and keeping a difficult situation under control,” he added.

“We are especially grateful to the retailers who, despite the tensions, kept their businesses open — demonstrating the true meaning of courage, responsibility and trust. Let us never forget that, thanks to them, our cities are more vibrant, more attractive and safer,” Barbieri said.

The executive said half of the local fashion stores decided to close on Saturday, while restaurants and bars remained open. He reiterated that besides the economic implications, the city faces reputational damage.

Meanwhile, many independent retailers took to local media to voice their concerns, highlighting how they can’t afford continued early closings and lost income opportunities, especially with the holiday season around the corner.

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