Three months before the French presidential election, President Emanuel Macron decided to "bag" the unvaccinated, provoking the reaction of the parliament while the government is trying to pass a bill that will impose the use of a vaccine pass to address it. covid-19.
"I really want to punch the unvaccinated people. And so we will continue to do so, until the end. This is the strategy, "said Macron in an interview with the French newspaper Le Parisien.
"I will not put them in prison, I will not vaccinate them by force. And so we have to tell them: from January 15 you will not be able to go to a restaurant, you will not be able to have a drink, you will not be able to have a coffee, you will not be able to go to the theater, you will not be able to go to cinema… ”, the French president explained.
His remarks immediately provoked reactions in the National Assembly and forced the speaker of parliament to suspend the body's work at midnight due to the chaos caused. The deputies, however, continued after a while their discussions on the vaccination pass.
"No health crisis justifies this phraseology," said Bruno Retagio, head of the Les Republicains Senate (right).
The candidate for the presidential election of the party "Rebellious France" (radical left) Jean-Luc Melanson described the statements of Macron as "shocking". "Does the president understand what he is saying? The World Health Organization recommends 'persuasion instead of coercion'. And he? 'Let's bag more'. "Shocking", he commented in a post on Twitter.
For Marin Lepen, leader of the far-right National Alarm party, a president should not speak in this way. The guarantor of the unity of the nation insists on dividing and declares that he wants to make the vaccinated second-class citizens ".
Vaccine pass
Discussions in parliament on the vaccine pass bill, one of the pillars of the Macron's government health policy, were suspended from midnight Monday to Tuesday, at a time when it seemed a given as a majority of lawmakers supported it.
Yesterday, after discussions on the bill resumed, lawmakers agreed to increase the age at which one is required to have a vaccination pass to 16 from the one originally mentioned in the government plan. The discussions are going to continue today.
As the epidemic covid-19 is on the rise again in France the government intended this bill to be finally adopted by the end of the week in order to enter into force on 15 January.
Government spokesman Gabriel Atal defended an "absolutely necessary" bill, as more than 19.600 patients with covid-19 are hospitalized. Moreover, yesterday more than 270.000 new cases were announced for the previous 24 hours, a record number.
France has one of the highest vaccination rates among EU countries, with more than 90% of the country's adults receiving two doses of the vaccine covid-19.
With the vaccination pass, the government wants to put even more pressure on the approximately 5 million unvaccinated French over the age of 12.
Source: ΑΠΕ-ΜΠΕ- AFP