The French prime minister has called for tough new measures to punish those hijacking legitimate protests by looting, burning and vandalising.

Speaking after the weekend’s violence at gilets jaunes (yellow vests) demonstrations, Edouard Philippe said tough new public order measures were necessary to protect those wishing to exercise their fundamental right to protest from the “scandalous” behaviour of thugs and vandals – who, he added, should be prosecuted and made to pay for the damage they cause.

Philippe said the government was considering setting up a register of rioters, similar to that used to deter football hooligans, to force them to report to police and prevent them from joining demonstrations.

Philippe declared the government’s tough new stance in a television interview on the prime-time evening news on TF1.

He said that since the gilets jaunes protests began in November, there had been 5,600 people taken into custody and 1,000 convictions. He added that the government had made concessions to address some of the movement’s demands and was seeking a “national debate” – to take place later this month – but that there would be no concessions to those who threaten French institutions, including the president, and who seek to “invalidate the results of elections”.

“In order to defend the right to protest, to which we are all attached, the law has to evolve … we cannot accept that certain people profit from these demonstrations to break and burn. I say calmly but with determination: these people will not have the last word in our country,” he said.

Philippe’s interview came hours after a former professional boxer who was filmed attacking a police officer during demonstrations in Paris at the weekend turned himself in to authorities.

The interior minister, Christophe Castaner, said on Twitter that the assailant, named in French media as Christophe Dettinger, “will have to answer for his actions in court”. A separate investigation has been launched after a police chief was seen on video assaulting a protester in the southern French city of Toulon.

In the Paris video, a man dressed in black is seen throwing punches at a riot police officer attempting to stop protesters crossing a bridge over the Seine. Shortly afterwards he is seen kicking a police officer on the ground in the head and face.

On Twitter, the police union SCPN wrote: “Monsieur, you have hit a colleague on the ground. You have been identified. For a boxer, you apparently don’t have a lot of respect or the rules. We’re going to teach you those of the law.”

Dettinger, 37, was French light-heavyweight champion in 2007 and 2008 and retired from the sport in 2013. His former trainer Jacky Trompesauce said his actions were “out of character”.

“He’s a top-level sportsman, a respectful man, not a yob … perhaps he couldn’t stomach what the gendarmes were doing to people weaker than them,” Trompesauce told journalists.

Laurent Boucher, another former coach, told France Inter radio. “I think he lost it. People can be impulsive.”

In a video posted on Facebook the evening before handing himself in to police, Dettinger said he “boiled over” after being tear-gassed with his wife on his eighth Saturday protest. “I reacted badly. Yes, I reacted badly,” he said in the video, adding he had seen the “repression” of the police towards protesters.

“I’m demonstrating for all the pensioners, for the future of my children, for single women, for everything we’re fighting for. I am a gilet jaune. I have the anger of the people in me … it’s always the little people who pay.”

Dettinger also denied reports he supported the far right or far left saying he was just “proud to be French”. He appealed for protestors to continue the struggle “peacefully”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Women wear yellow vests and hold balloons in a protest in Paris on Sunday. Photograph: Sevgi/SIPA/REX/Shutterstock

In Toulon, officials said an internal investigation had been launched into the actions of police commander Didier Andrieux, seen attacking several gilets jaunes protesters.

Le Parisien said the officer had been given a warning in 2015 after an alleged incident with another police officer.

The French authorities said a total of 50,000 protesters took part in an eighth successive weekend of demonstrations across the country.

A third video, shared widely on social networks, showed protesters using a forklift truck to break down the entrance to a ministry annexe housing government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux on Saturday afternoon. Griveaux was taken out of a back door during the incident.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A grab from footage of protesters on a forklift drive used to ram through the entrance to a ministry annexe housing a government spokesman. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Gilets jaunes protests began in November to oppose proposed rises in fuel taxes. The movement has since enlarged to encompass wider grievances against the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and his centrist government. Protesters have rejected concessions announced by Macron aimed at responding to public anger.

On Sunday, hundreds of women in yellow vests marched in several French cities carrying yellow balloons. Karen, a nurse from Marseilles, said the aim was to give “another image” of the movement.

“All that’s in the media regarding this movement is acts of violence, while everyone is forgetting what is at the root of the problem,” she told Le Parisien.