Macron Condemns Violence Across France, to Visit Gulf on Energy

Macron's pairing of domestic unrest with an overseas energy mission exposes how fuel costs have become both a street-level grievance and a strategic vulnerability for France. The emphasis on distinguishing protest from lawbreaking signals a government trying to hold a line between dialogue and enforcement, while the Gulf trip implicitly concedes that supply security sits upstream of the cost complaints. The test ahead is whether securing external energy supply does anything to cool domestic pressure over prices, and whether the legal response hardens or defuses the protests.