The brazen robbery at the Louvre Museum on Sunday—during which thieves escaped with jewels once belonging to Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie—has quickly become a political flashpoint in France, with figures across the spectrum using it to attack President Emmanuel Macron’s government and its cultural leadership.
The theft has become a kind of shorthand for what critics describe as Macron’s France: a state weakened by austerity, wavering authority, and institutional neglect. The high-profile crime has quickly been seized on as evidence of systemic failure.
France’s right wing has been particularly vocal in its criticism of Macron and his centrist coalition, Ensemble pour la République, which currently governs. Minister of Culture Rachida Dati, Louvre director Laurence des Cars, and other cultural officials have found themselves in the crosshairs.
“The Louvre is a global symbol of our culture,” Jordan Bardella, president of the far-right National Rally party, wrote on X. “This heist, which allowed thieves to steal the Crown Jewels of France, is an intolerable humiliation for our country. How far will the decay of the State go?”
Other far-right politicians seamlessly slotted the robbery into their ongoing narrative of Macron’s fecklessness, and so-called “wokism” gone mad, with Marion Maréchal, founder of the far-right party Identity–Liberties and a member of the European Parliament, going so far as to call the theft a “humiliation.”
“For the past 24 hours, France has been the laughingstock of the world because of the ridiculous theft of the crown jewels at the Louvre,” she wrote, before demanding the resignations of Des Cars and the museum’s security chief Dominique Buffin, both appointed by Dati. Maréchal accused the minister of pursuing what she described as a “feminization policy” in hiring—an unsupported claim circulating on France’s far right that alleges women were promoted for gender parity rather than competence.
Marine Le Pen, a National Rally lawmaker and the party’s former leader, called the theft “a wound to the French soul.” “Any attack on national heritage is a wound to the French soul,” she wrote on X. “Nevertheless, responsibility requires us to note that our museums and historic buildings are not secured to the level of the threats weighing on them. We must react.”
Éric Ciotti, the former head of the right-wing Republicans party, said the theft reflected the “weakness of the State.” “When the State no longer guarantees the security of its treasures, the entire nation is under threat,” he told the Financial Times.
Other National Rally members took the rhetoric further. Lawmaker Jean-Philippe Tanguy claimed on X that French museums “are DELIBERATELY not secured to the level of the treasures they hold.”
Those on the left have also faulted the government, though most blamed austerity and staff cuts rather than negligence. “This robbery comes a few months after museum employees warned about security flaws,” David Belliard, deputy mayor of Paris and member of the Green Party, wrote on X. “Why were they ignored by the museum management and the ministry?”
François Hollande, the Socialist former president of France, told BFMTV that while reinforcing museum security is a priority, authorities must also “go after groups, gangs, bands, and even those making orders often from abroad, to recover objects of exceptional value.”
Ian Brossat, a senator from the French Communist Party, placed the blame squarely on Dati. “One does not expect a Minister of Culture to come get photographed with the Louvre staff after its burglary,” he wrote. “One expects a minister to safeguard the operating budgets of cultural institutions, not to participate in their sabotage.”
Alexandre Portier, a centrist member of Parliament, said he plans to propose a parliamentary commission of inquiry “on the protection of French heritage and museum security,” according to Politico.
The criticism has been particularly pointed toward Dati, a longtime conservative and former Sarkozy ally, whose appointment last year came as a major surprise. Her crossover appointment was seen as an attempt by Macron to broaden his coalition, as he shifted tack from center-left to right. It has also made her a lightning rod for attacks from both the right and the left.
The robbery of the Louvre could not have come at a worse time for Macron. Just days earlier, his government narrowly survived a no-confidence vote in Parliament. The motion—filed by the far-left France Unbowed party—won 271 votes in the 577-seat National Assembly, short of the 289 needed to oust Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu. Lecornu had already resigned once this month, after less than four weeks in office, only to be reappointed days later.
The vote underscored the deep instability of Macron’s second term, as his fracturing coalition struggles to fend off National Rally—now the second-largest party in the Assembly—and France Unbowed, the democratic socialist movement founded in 2016.
For a political class eager to devour Macron, the Louvre robbery is nothing less than blood in the water.
