Paris feels impact of looting aftermath

Online reselling platform Vinted has taken down listings of items thought to have been looted from shops during the weekend's riots across France.

About 3,000 shops were targeted and Small Businesses Minister Serge Papin held a meeting with marketplace officials and government representatives after stolen goods began to appear for sale online.

Digital Minister Anne Le Henanff said "stolen items from this weekend are being offered for sale on certain platforms … we expect these platforms to remove the listings in question without delay".

A Vinted representative told the BBC the company had acted swiftly.

"Since this weekend, our teams have taken immediate action to identify and remove listings linked to the looting, and we have stepped up monitoring of suspicious listings," they said. "When our rules are breached, we act against the accounts involved, up to permanent bans."

Hundreds of millions of euros' worth of damage was reported after protests, initially over the cost of living, but coming on top of another protest about school funding, degenerated into violence.

Finance Minister Roland Lescure has said the government will provide support for shopkeepers and craftspeople affected by the disturbances, but Patrick Martin, head of business confederation Medef, said the state had already "failed" in its duty.

"It is up to the state to cover (operating losses of those who are uninsured) because we pay taxes, including to ensure that law and order is maintained," he told RMC radio.

Several prestigious fashion house shops in Paris were targeted.

One shop employee told the Financial Times newspaper the police had been unprepared, and on the back foot in the face of the mob.

"My kids have social media and they seemed to know it was going to be war out there this weekend," they added.

Another eyewitness quoted by The Guardian newspaper drew a direct line between the initial protests about the underfunding of the country's schools, which led to demonstrations last week, and the weekend violence and looting.

"The groups breaking into shops aren't hostile to passersby, so you'd see local residents walking down the street on their way home late at night, and masked teenagers running past in the other direction carrying looted goods," she said. "It's so strange — it's like two different universes in parallel worlds. It says a lot about society — it shows we have neglected our education system and that we're living in a consumer society where all we say to our young people is: 'buy, buy, buy'. In this type of extreme capitalism, some people don't have enough money to buy all of this and so they attack."