After Gérald Darmanin, the Minister of the Interior, established a curfew for minors in Pointe-à-Pitre in Guadeloupe, in order to fight against delinquency, several right-wing and far-right mayors announced that they wanted to impose a similar system in their municipalities. Questioned on this subject by France 3 Occitanie, Friday April 25, Mr. Darmanin said he was “favorable” to curfews elsewhere in France.
Declaring “that it is not normal for children, adolescents, minors to be in the street at midnight, one o’clock, two o’clock in the morning” when they “should be at home, sleeping, going the next day to school”, the minister declared: “When there is this kind of thing [violence] (…) – this may be the case in other parts of the national territory – I am in favor of the curfew which affects minors”.
“Mayors have the authority to issue decrees, in fact, like the State, to prevent these minors from being outside, particularly those under 13 (…). I support them and the prefects of the Republic will support them”, he added, while specifying “that it is obviously necessary that the administrative court, if seized, can [verify] that there is no have no excess of power.”
“Completely reasonable people,” according to Darmanin
Last week, the Minister of the Interior ordered the establishment for two months of a curfew for minors under the age of 18 from 8 p.m. in Pointe-à-Pitre, in Gaudeloupe, in order to fight against delinquency. “We are very struck by the fact that minors are extremely numerous in delinquency unfortunately, in Guadeloupe in general and in Pointe-à-Pitre in particular,” argued Mr. Darmanin.
Following this announcement, the mayor of Béziers, Robert Ménard, declared on Tuesday that he had established a curfew for minors under the age of 13 in “three priority districts” of his city, from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m., except if they are accompanied by an adult. In his decree, the councilor justifies his decision by the “increasing number of young minors left to their own devices in the middle of the night”, as well as by a “worsening number of incidents”, notably “urban violence”, citing the school fire four years ago, in 2019, and the “July 2023 riots.”
Other mayors, inspired by the announcement of the Minister of the Interior and then the initiative of the councilor of Béziers, formerly close to Ms. Le Pen, have also announced such measures, like the mayor of Nice , Christian Estrosi (Horizons), who on the same day welcomed the initiative of the mayor of Béziers on BFM-TV, and announced his desire to establish a curfew “across the entire city” for minors under the age of 13 unaccompanied.
According to Gérald Darmanin, mayors who implement such measures “are completely reasonable people”. “I heard what the mayor of Béziers said. I want to say that I support these initiatives, even if obviously it is not up to the State to replace all the territories and all the municipalities,” the Minister of the Interior declared on this subject.