Protesters blocked the entrance to the Louvre in Paris on Monday, as French authorities scrambled to stem public discontent fueling mass cost-of-living demonstrations. 

French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said he had asked regional authorities to impose curfews in some cities on Monday evening.

The measures, which he said would be "partial" and "localized," are intended to protect businesses after weekend demonstrations spilled over into some of the worst street violence in recent years.

President Emmanuel Macron ordered a security review as the country's interior minister admitted that the police "had lost control" during the weekend's unrest.

Undeterred, the Yellow Vests movement which organized the weekend's rallies called for a new round of protests on Saturday.

Italy, Spain and Portugal, where anger over rising prices has also led to protests, were keeping a nervous eye on the developments after smaller clashes broke out in Milan over the weekend and protests about housing costs persisted in Spanish cities.

Surging cost of living

Some half a million people turned out across France to protest the surging cost of living, a culmination of four weeks of protests that began with high school students demanding better conditions at their schools.

What started as peaceful demonstrations morphed into violence in some places, as masked groups on the sidelines of the protests attacked law enforcement, broke into town halls and other public buildings, setting many of them ablaze, looted shops, and set fire to cars, bicycles and scooters on the streets.

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez offered to resign on Monday after more than 2,500 people were arrested and nearly 1,000 members of the security forces injured. Protesters were also hurt, with one demonstrator's hand blown off by a police crowd-control grenade. 

"On Saturday, in some major cities, you couldn't look shopkeepers in the eye after hundreds of shops had been looted and tell them we hadn't lost control," Nunez said.

Macron refused Nunez's resignation, even as he acknowledged security and intelligence failures in the government response, despite the some 60,000 law enforcement personnel deployed across the country on Saturday.

Macron slams 'unbridled' violence

Nationwide, more than 2,330 people were taken into police custody over the weekend, 70 percent of whom were adults, Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin said.

More than 2,000 shops were expected to have been affected by the weekend's violence across France, with damage running into "hundreds of millions of euros," according to chamber of commerce president Alain Di Crescenzo.

In an address to the nation on Sunday evening, Macron slammed the "unbridled" violence and said local authorities would be able to ban - "if necessary" - certain rallies in coming days. 

But he stopped short of announcing drastic measures, such as a state of emergency or curfew.

EU said right to peaceful protest 'must be protected' in France but arson, looting, and attacks in France are 'unacceptable.' 

City authorities in Marseille said on Monday that public gatherings would be banned from noon to 08:00 pm (1000-1800 GMT).

The public discontent showed no signs of subsiding on Monday, with demonstrators blocking the entrance to Paris's iconic Louvre Museum, the most visited in the world. 

"We are proud to announce that we are blocking the world's largest museum," read a leaflet posted outside the museum, as management and unions said the protest was led by students from Ecole du Louvre.

Rising prices have fueled anger in France, where diesel prices have jumped nearly 40 percent and petrol by 25 percent since March and where food prices have risen by 25 percent since 2021.

The unrest in France has flared just months before a key presidential election where centrist Macron cannot stand again and Marine Le Pen, the far-right presidential candidate for the National Rally party, is riding high in the polls.

Ministers have blamed "ultra-left" groups for the violence, while Le Pen claimed that the party of her far-left rival for the presidency, Jean-Luc Melenchon, had "legitimized the violence."

The left has accused Macron of ignoring protesters' demands, while the right is calling on him to take a firmer line.

Demonstrations across Europe

With costs of living rising across Europe, smaller demonstrations have broken out in other countries.

During the weekend, clashes broke out on the sidelines of a cost-of-living demonstration in Milan, with Mayor Giuseppe Sala warning, "I'm very worried because it's a new phenomenon, which also originates from an international scenario and therefore feeds itself."

Youths and police clashed for a second day on Sunday in Milan, where mostly black-clad assailants hurled bottles, ransacked stores, and destroyed property around the central Duomo plaza.

Police in the northern city have arrested more than 200 people since Saturday, according to Ansa news agency. 

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni called for a security meeting on Monday to address the violence, which resembled some scenes of chaos and looting in Paris. 

Similar troubles took place in the northern cities of Bologna and Turin following other protests.

Meanwhile, hundreds of Portuguese activists shrugged off government warnings to dismantle tents pitched in the heart of the capital Lisbon and second city of Porto, part of ongoing demonstrations at soaring housing costs.

Authorities have told the demonstrators that they face prosecution if they continue to occupy public spaces. 

In Porto, where the movement began earlier this month, protest spokeswoman Maria Joao Calisto told Publico daily they had sought permission to continue their demonstration through to December 31.

Demonstrators have also sought to align themselves with similar protests against housing costs in Spain, and have urged labor unions to call for a general strike on November 11.

The protesters accuse the government of failing to act to tackle the housing crisis and trying to push through rental market reforms making tenant eviction easier.

In Spain, hundreds of tents have occupied Madrid's central Puerta del Sol square since September, when the eviction of an 87-year-old woman from her lifelong flat sparked nationwide protests in a country with soaring housing costs.

Spain has seen almost four weeks of protests that helped spark the calling of a snap general election for November 29.