The French government formally has resorted to a 1955 state of emergency law – issued during the colonial war in Algeria – in a bid to check the ethnic riots that are rocking the country, with Prime Minister Villepin declaring that the embattled nation is facing a “moment of truth.”

Rioters thumbed their noses at the drastic emergency measures late last night as they looted and burned two superstores in Arras, set fire to the Nice-Matin newspaper office in Grasses, and paralyzed Lyon’s subway system with a gasoline bomb, according to the Associated Press.

The wire service also reported that nine buses were set ablaze at a bus depot in Dole, and a bus exploded in Bassens near the southwest city of Bordeaux after a gasoline bomb was thrown into it.

For 12 days, the county governors, or prefets, are empowered to impose curfews and strictly regulate public and private transportation. They can expel people from designated areas or alternatively place them under house arrest. They can ban public meetings, close public facilities, or suspend civil liberties. Some 10,000 security personnel from the National Police and the Gendarmerie (the French National Guard) have been dispatched to the most troubled counties, such as Seine-St.-Denis in northern Paris, in order to implement the emergency regulations. The 1955 law provides for even more drastic measures, including house searches during the night, internment without trial, and press censorship. Mr. Villepin insisted, however, that there isn’t yet any need for such steps to be taken.

“We must be lucid: The republic is at a moment of truth,” Mr. Villepin told Parliament, according to the AP. “The effectiveness of our integration model is in question.”

“France is wounded. It does not recognize itself in these devastated streets and neighborhoods, in this outburst of hatred and of violence that vandalizes and kills,” he said, according to an AP dispatch. “The return to order is the absolute priority.”

It is too early to tell what the political impact of the state of emergency will be. The politics of France have been too complex and volatile over the past three years. The conservative right dominates the government and the National Assembly, but the left controls 20 out of 22 provinces. The right is deeply divided: President Chirac and Mr. Villepin are true to the Gaullist tradition, which is essentially statist, with anti-American undertones; while the minister of the interior, Nicolas Sarkozy, who has achieved almost exclusive control over the conservative party, UMP, calls for a more free-market and Atlanticist agenda.

The Socialist Party is divided, too: There is a pragmatic wing, with the current chairman, Francois Hollande, and the former minister of finance, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, but also a leftist wing. Even more significantly, some 40% of the French support smaller, radical parties, from the right-wing National Front to the Greens and the communist or Trotskyite far left. Last spring, the referendum on the European Constitution was a major blow to both the Chirac right and the Hollande left. The present ethnic violence is another blow – to the entire political class. Still, there will be winners and losers.

The state of emergency has been welcomed, either tacitly or openly, by most mayors and city officials in greater Paris. They are in need of some rest after 12 days and nights of riots. They have realized that there is a strong popular demand for law and order, which must be met at any cost.

According to the DCRG, the National Police’s branch that monitors public opinion, “Citizens are even tempted to set up self-defense groups” if the government doesn’t act. That would be a worrisome development for the entire political class, right or left: Throughout French history, the emergence of militias has been a harbinger of revolution or at least of regime change. Indeed, some mayors have considered setting up “civic patrols” in order to rein in the would-be vigilantes.

It comes as no surprise that the Green Party and the far left, which are very close to the ethnic minorities, disapprove of the state of emergency. The Socialist Party’s left wing – from Claude Dilain, the mayor of Clichy-sous-Bois, to Julien Dray, member of Parliament for Grigny – expresses similar reservations: “It is a merely a scam, the primary function of which is to cover the failure of the government’s urban policy,” Mr. Dilain said.