French business leaders call for order after riots and looting: 'The Republic must protect its shopkeepers!'

Business owners in France are speaking out after cost-of-living protests turned into widespread rioting and looting across the country over the weekend.

Alexandre Bompard, the CEO of Carrefour, one of France’s largest supermarket chains, said that about 1,500 businesses were targeted in the unrest.

Bompard and several other corporate heavyweights condemned the rioting and called on French authorities to restore order.

Photos and video from Paris and other French cities showed black-clad rioters smashing storefronts and leaving laden with armfuls of pilfered goods. “We cannot allow violence to destroy what generations have put so much energy into building,” Thierry Guibert, the CEO of Lacoste, said on X.

Here’s what business owners are saying.