On July 15, 2010, the Uriage Casino, near Grenoble, was robbed by Karim Boudouda and an accomplice1. During their pursuit by the police to the working-class neighbourhood of La Villeneuve, an exchange of gunfire injured a police officer and resulted in the death of Karim Boudouda. Several nights of urban riots followed.
Nicolas Sarkozy, elected President of the Republic three years earlier, seized upon this situation to deliver a "shock" speech on security and immigration on July 30, 2010, during the inauguration of the new Prefect of Isère.2.
At the time, Nicolas Beron Perez was the leader of the Jeunes Communistes de l’Isère (Young Communists of Isère), a militant group at the forefront of the fight against Sarkozyism in the Alpine capital. Today, as a communist municipal councillor in Grenoble with responsibility for Housing, he analyses the consequences of the Grenoble Speech, which marked the starting point of fifteen years of drift by French ruling circles towards the far-right.
The Grenoble Speech, 15 years later...
Miscellaneous News: "Robbery, Car Chase!""
Current Events: "Gunfire, One Dead!""
Media Coverage: "Riot, Repression, Conviction!""
Demagogic Propaganda: The Grenoble Speech
On July 30, 2010, the President of the Republic, surrounded by the Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Justice, declared in Grenoble: "The war I have decided to wage against drug dealers, against thugs, that war will last for several years." "
Fifteen years later, this declaration of war leaves a bitter taste, that of lost time and broken lives, that of ineffective belligerent nonsense and demagogic warlike incantations, the bitter disgust of a nauseating electoralist inclination to link immigration, neighborhoods, and delinquency. And ever since, other speakers tirelessly read from the same teleprompter and the same dusty, viscous script.
15 Years of Ineffectiveness in Security Matters
President Sarkozy made a societal choice by abandoning community policing, replacing it with innumerable "video protection" cameras.
Where we prefer prevention and human mediation to sometimes prevent a criminal act, others prefer the distant choice of digital voyeurism, to let the criminal act be perpetrated and then try to elucidate it.The reality is that the effectiveness of video surveillance is a voyeuristic fantasy not demonstrated by any serious study. On the contrary, according to a Gendarmerie study, only 1.5% to 4.1% of investigations are solved thanks to recorded images. The same observation was made by the Court of Accounts, which indicates that there is "no overall correlation […] between the existence of video protection systems and the level of crime committed in public places, or the elucidation rates." "
Similarly, the "anti-gang" law creating the offense of "participation in a gang with violent aims" allowed for anticipated repression. This offense has been largely misused and exploited during the Yellow Vests social movement with expeditious class justice,resulting in nearly 10,000 arrests, 3,100 convictions, and 400 immediate prison sentences in less than a year.
Thus, the policy of "results" and expediency, like mandatory minimum sentences, which despite thunderous announcements, ultimately had only a "weak deterrent effect" while contributing to an increase in the prison population of 4,000 inmates.
An expeditious and dehumanised judicial system then generates only a punitive mechanism:
- Where the convicted person dilutes their responsibility in an equivalence table, thus escaping the necessary understanding of the sentence in light of the harm suffered by society or by the victims;
- Where the convicted person is stripped of an individual sentence, taking into account their background and the context of their offense,thus preventing justice from pronouncing a just sentence conducive to preventing recidivism;
- Where the convicted person is doomed to overload an undignified and exhausted prison and penitentiary system .
15 Years of Security Escalation
In his speech, Sarkozy opened the possibility of extending the deprivation of nationality to "any person of foreign origin who would have voluntarily attacked the life of a police officer, a gendarme, or any person holding public authority." A proposal emanating from the far-right… It would take the 2015 attacks and the state of emergency for the Valls government to attempt an extension of the deprivation of nationality,not only for dual nationals naturalised French as was the case, but also for dual nationals born French.
Then, from Darmanin to Retailleau, in recent years many people have been deprived of their nationality, not only as a direct consequence of a serious act, but also for real or alleged statements.
Ultimately, as in 1940, when communist deputies Maurice Thorez and André Marty were stripped of their nationality and made stateless, today some propose to punish Rima Hassan, an MEP for La France Insoumise, born stateless, a Palestinian refugee, for her political commitment by withdrawing her French nationality… From "crime against the State" and the Nation, to offense of opinion, there's only one step!
" There are few problems as serious as those concerning child protection, and, among them, those relating to the fate of children brought to justice. France is not rich enough in children to have the right to neglect anything that can make them healthy beings." These are the words accompanying the 1945 ordinance, which established different justice procedures for minors based on three principles: the mitigation of responsibility, the primacy of education, and the specialisation of jurisdictions.These are the axes that have been systematically attacked by the right since 2002!
By extension, "if the minor is guilty, it's because the parents are lax"… Thus, the President proposed to suspend CAF benefits for absenteeism… This idea, implemented in 2010, was repealed in 2013 as it was deemed ineffective…
Repressing minors, incarcerating them, definitively determining their future, even though France, report after report, fails in all its responsibilities in child protection and social assistance! The right persists in its harshness against juvenile delinquents, with ever more convictions while abandoning the protection of the Nation's children!
15 Years of Stigmatisation and Amalgamation
While the European Day of Commemoration of the Roma Genocide during the Second World War will take place on August 2, 2025, let's not forget thatin Grenoble, the President had announced the expulsion and destruction of all Roma camps installed in France..
This announcement would lead to the scheduling of real round-ups among these European citizens…And even today, from Gérald Darmanin to Bruno Retailleau, no opportunity is missed to stigmatise travellers or the Roma people…
In direct line with Jacques Chirac's speech about "the noise and the smell," Sarkozy relaunched the most tragic of fables, that of the link between immigration and delinquency… Ultimately not knowing which wave of immigration to surf on, the president then spoke of an uncontrolled flow, opening the floodgates to the psychosis of a surge, of a great replacement…
The uninhibited right ultimately had only one complex, that of being in the heritage of the Republic.Today, with rare exceptions, this right has completely succumbed to the incantations of the far-right, in the desire to replace our Republic with another, more reactionary entity… Today, too many believe that love for a Nation, respect for a Homeland inevitably passes through hatred of the other!
For the past fifteen years, ultimately, with each election and reshuffle, the Res Publica of all has been systematically plundered and monopolised to enrich the Res Privata of a handful of high-ranking bourgeois, start-uppers, and liberal promoters. Everywhere, territories emptied of public services, everywhere, hearts dried up of hope and fraternity, and drenched in resentment and disunion!
Assessment of the "Grenoble Speech"... as of July 30, 2025
As of July 30, 2025, former President of the Republic Nicolas Sarkozy, former Minister of the Interior Brice Hortefeux, and former Minister of Justice Michèle Alliot-Marie, have all been convicted in different cases:the first two for "complicity in illegal campaign financing and criminal conspiracy," the last for "illegal taking of interet" ...
As of July 30, 2025, the warlords against delinquency are ultimately just an organised gang in suits and ties, and the successors of this ideological line are merely small-time criminal demagogues,monopolists of the common good, all from the same benches of the National Assembly where they are corrupting our Republic! In unison, they repeat the same nonsense and lies for 15 years, because for them, as Hannah Arendt said, "Veracity has never been counted among the political virtues, and lying has always been considered a perfectly justified means in political affairs. "
As of July 30, 2025, violations of the Law tend to become norms, police blunders become commonplace, and the agents guaranteeing our security are weary and tired.Poor civil servants are sinking into corruption to make ends meet, and prevention and reintegration policies are struggling. The number of compatriots falling into poverty continues to increase at the same rate as the number of multimillionaires. Ordinary racism is injected into television, distilling hatred of the poor, inciting hatred of foreigners…
As of July 30, 2025, they have waged an ineffective war against ourselves, where no defeat has been granted and no victory heralded.We have found neither truce, nor concord, much less Peace. More than ever, it is time to turn the page, to restore justice to its vision, the police to its honour, and prevention to its dignity, all three freed from the logic of all-repressive, all-security, and all-stigmatising approaches!
Series of posters published in 2010 by the Jeunes Communistes de l’Isère.
Two of them ("2005-2010: the arsonist is still at large" and "Wanted: the Elysée robber"), pasted on the walls of Grenoble on July 29, 2010, by three JC activists, led to their arrest and detention3. This authoritarian manoeuvre sparked a significant mobilisation to defend them: they were released without any charges held against them.





- https://www.leparisien.fr/faits-divers/abattu-hier-apres-le-braquage-du-casino-17-07-2010-1004038.php ↩︎
- https://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/le-scan/2014/03/27/25001-20140327ARTFIG00084-le-discours-de-grenoble-de-nicolas-sarkozy.php ↩︎
- https://www.humanite.fr/politique/-/des-caricatures-de-sarkozy-sur-les-murs-trois-jeunes-communistes-arretes ↩︎
Illustration image: "Nicolas Sarkozy – World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2011", photograph from January 27, 2011, by Moritz Hager – World Economic Forum (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)