The difficulty of governing in times of crisis.
Since the lightening of the confinement this Saturday, it is the grumbling on different floors.
Restaurateurs and mountain professionals are angry at the ban on operating their activities, while representatives of the Catholic Church denounce the gauge set at 30 people during religious ceremonies ... regardless of the size of the building.
The Council of State ruled in their favor on Sunday, ordering the government to review its copy within three days.
Before that, throughout the month of November, some traders of products classified as "non-essential" were enraged against the impossibility of remaining open.
A priori, this very gradual easing could however be considered as good news for all French people confined for a month.
“It's very complicated for a government because it is not going to open the floodgates suddenly or leave everything closed for too long.
The idea is to deconfin little by little in order to progressively achieve a low level of circulation of the virus ”, underlines epidemiologist Carole Dufouil.
"Passion for equality"
Nevertheless, sociologist Jocelyn Raude sees several explanations for this addition of discontent.
On the one hand, "there is a great characteristic of the French population: the passion for equality and an intolerance for inequalities", he explains.
On the other hand, the researcher specializing in health and infectious diseases points to a mutual “lack of trust”.
“On the one hand, people do not trust the government to manage the crisis, with one of the highest levels of mistrust in Europe.
On the other hand, the government does not seem to trust the inhabitants since we have one of the highest levels of sanctions and bans in Europe, with Italy and Spain, ”he explains.
Automatically, all of this generates a climate conducive to discontent, especially after nine times of pandemic which resulted in a massive economic crisis and an increase in depressive disorders.
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Another point which arouses the anger is the supposed absence of precise scientific criteria justifying such or such measure.
In a press release published on November 27, the Conference of French Bishops questioned "the real criteria used by the government to set the conditions for this confinement".
Prime Minister Jean Castex had just confirmed the level limited to 30 people, announced two days earlier by Emmanuel Macron, before being therefore disowned by the Council of State.
A "limitation fixed independently of the area of the premises in question", to which "no other authorized activity is subject", is not "justified by the risks which are specific to religious ceremonies", asserted the judges.
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“To strengthen acceptability, it would be more audible to have a rule based on the area for all the different places,” approves Carole Dufouil.
In shops, the gauge is for example a customer for 8m².
"We must not think that we want to annoy the Catholic community and I want to believe that this gauge of 30 faithful was founded", argues for her part the deputy Marie-Christine Verdier-Jouclas, spokesperson for the parliamentary group LREM.
A "double standard" for restaurateurs
Restaurant owners, for their part, feel aggrieved and annoyed at having to wait until January 20, at the earliest, to reopen.
The majority put forward two scientific studies showing these establishments among the most at risk.
But they were carried out in the United States during the first wave, that is to say in sanitary conditions and a social context different from those in France.
And one of them is a small sample.
“Restaurants in the United States have nothing to do with ours.
[…] Double standards are not acceptable, not understandable, ”thundered the president of the Hauts-de-France region, Xavier Bertrand, this Sunday on BFMTV.
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If he recognizes that these studies "are not necessarily valid for France", the LREM deputy Jean-François Eliaou insists that "the work agrees on the fact that the places where we drink and where we eat are places of propagation of the virus ".
"When we eat around a Parisian table, we are not less than a meter and the seats are not staggered", he adds, while the professionals say they are ready to set up a strict health protocol.
As for the ski lifts closed, "the sentence fell from above, like all the management of the crisis, with a decision without coherence or common sense", denounced many elected officials or professionals of Auvergne-Rhône -Alps, in a column published on Saturday 28 November.
"How to explain that we can go to a cinema in Paris but not to an open-air ski resort?
“, Ask the signatories, including the president of the region Laurent Wauquiez.
In reality, you can always go for a holiday in the mountains, but without being able to indulge in alpine skiing or snowboarding.
"It's a complicated decision to understand," admits Jean-François Eliaou himself.
"I would rather have closed access to ski resorts", adds this medical immunologist by profession, who especially fears "raclette or fondue evenings for 50 people around a stove in an apartment".
No general radicalization of anger
Several rebellious elected officials also regularly denounce decision-making on the sly, during Defense Councils.
Enough to reinforce the "problem of legibility in the decisions taken", also points out Serge Slama, professor of public law at the University of Grenoble-Alpes.
“The government is acting responsibly and we have to make choices.
Obviously, we are dissatisfied, ”assumes on the contrary the deputy Marie-Christine Verdier-Jouclas.
Despite all this, we do not observe in France, for the moment, a very powerful protest movement in the street and very unified.
No great figure has yet emerged as a "leader" of the sling, as it had been the case during the yellow vests crisis.
And the anti-mask and anti-restriction movement has never attracted several thousand demonstrators, as has happened in Germany.
"I am rather surprised at this relative calm and not to see more radical groups appearing more, as if the majority of French people were nevertheless showing great patience and a sense of responsibility", concludes Jocelyn Raude.