François Hollande is facing a severe political backlash in the wake of the Nice attack as rightwing politicians accused him of failing to implement sufficiently effective security and intelligence measures after previous atrocities.

The French president, who travelled to Nice with the prime minister, Manuel Valls, after delivering an ashen-faced TV address at 4am from the presidential palace, was under pressure to explain what concrete measures he had taken since the Paris attacks in November to crack down on the threat of terrorism. The motivation for Thursday’s attack is not yet known, but it is being investigated as an act of terror.

In his address, the president announced a three-month extension of the state of national emergency, which allows police to conduct house raids and searches without a warrant or judicial oversight and gives extra powers to officials to place people under house arrest. He insisted: “Nothing will make us yield in our will to fight terrorism. We will further strengthen our actions in Iraq and in Syria. We will continue striking those who attack us on our own soil.”

But the extension of the state of national emergency was condemned as a cosmetic measure designed to reassure the French public. With the presidential primary campaigns effectively under way, the tone of the criticism was unusually sharp for a time of national crisis and mourning.

Hollande’s government, whose popularity has hit record lows, recently faced allegations that France’s intelligence services had failed to get a handle on the jihadi threat.

Hollande and Christian Estrosi, president of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, were booed by an assembled crowd as their convoy drove through Nice on Friday.

Nice resident Christelle Hespel said she was disgusted by both men and that they had failed to protect her city. “Mr Estrosi is from the right, Mr Hollande from the left. I say it and I say it loud, these two are killers,” she told the Associated Press.

Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right Front National who polls say will reach the second round of next year’s election, said: “Nothing that we have proposed has been put in place. Considering the new nature of terrorism which is now a terrorism of opportunity ... the urgency is to attack the ideology on which this terrorism is based. And in this space, nothing has been done, absolutely nothing – no reintroduction of double punishment, nor depriving people of nationality, nor the closure of salafist mosques ... nor the banning of certain organisations. In truth, we are not at war. For the moment, we are in a war of words.”

Alain Juppé, the mayor of Bordeaux and favourite to be the centre-right’s presidential candidate, claimed that if the right measures had been taken the attack would have been preventable. He said a recent parliamentary inquiry into the November attacks had revealed flaws and shortcomings in France’s unreformed, multi-layered and poorly coordinated intelligence service.

“It is imperative that government intervene in this area to better coordinate our intelligence, to develop the territorial intelligence and better national intelligence,” he said, calling for the introduction of a prison police, the integration of the gendarmerie in the intelligence community and a “real strengthening of coordination bodies”.

One hundred and 47 people were killed in attacks in 2015 – from January’s gun attacks on the Charlie Hebdo offices and a kosher grocery store to the coordinated gun and bomb attacks across Paris on 13 November. Nice will add at least 84 deaths to this toll.

The report into the Paris attacks emphasised the difficulties posed by France’s six different intelligence units, which answer variously to the interior, defence and economy ministries. Overseas intelligence agencies complained to the parliamentary inquiry that it was impossible to work within such a bureaucratic mess.



The commission highlighted a “global failure” of French intelligence and recommended a total overhaul of the intelligence services, including the creation of a single, US-style national counter-terrorism agency. “Our country was not ready; now we must get ready,” Georges Fenech, the head of the commission, said.

Fenech said the multilayered, cumbersome intelligence apparatus was like an army of soldiers wearing lead boots. He said that without the multiple intelligence failings, the attack on the Bataclan rock concert in Paris, which killed 90, could have been prevented.

Fenech was unimpressed by Hollande’s response to Nice, saying: “I hear today the announcement of some measures by the president of the republic, including the state of emergency. But it is clear that the state of emergency, as currently applied, does not prevent those attacks. He also announces a strengthening of [Operation] Sentinelle [in which 10,000 soldiers patrol French streets]. Our report raises the question of the relevance of the guard force,” he told BFM TV.

He said: “The state of emergency, that solves nothing. It reassures, that’s all. Sentinel force does not solve anything either. It’s psychological.”

The interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, had this week rejected the idea of an overhaul of intelligence services. He said some of the report’s other recommendations were already being put in place.

Pierre Lellouche, a former Europe minister and leading figure in centre-right party Les Républicans, said: “We have been at war for a year and a half, yet nothing is happening about the control of the borders and nothing is happening in Europe about coordination of intelligence”. He said the first meeting between EU heads of intelligence had only occurred in January.

Former president Nicolas Sarkozy, leader of Les Républicains, also responded to the attacks with a call for a security crackdown. In an interview with Le Figaro in June, Sarkozy called for all jihadi prisoners to be kept in solitary confinement, the creation of a prison intelligence agency and electronic surveillance of prison cells.

He also called for any foreigner connected with terrorist activities or networks to be deported immediately, and for the establishment of de-radicalisation centres for convicted individuals. He said “prison was for the punishment for the horrors that have been committed”, but added that terrorists should not be released until they have been through a programme that leads to them being certified as no longer a threat to society.