The Limited Times

Coronavirus: an unprecedented crisis in Parliament

3/31/2020, 6:06:49 PM


An extremely rare event, the National Assembly and the Senate operate in slow motion, with no more than a dozen elected officials per session.

Even when the courtyard of the Palais Bourbon found itself drowned under more than a meter of water in 1910, the deputies continued to sit. Canoes piloted by sailors of the French Navy were used by deputies to join their bench. "When there is water in the hemicycle, we will go up on the bleachers" , had launched the deputy Paul Doumer, recalled opportunely these last days the Parliamentary chain. A few years later, in the fall of 1918, in the midst of a dramatic epidemic of Spanish flu, the deputies continued to sit there again.

Read also: Coronavirus: "There are great similarities with the Spanish flu epidemic"

By plunging back into the debates which agitated the Assembly, available to the general public on the Gallica digital site of the National Library of France, one realizes very strong similarities, on the lack of protective material or the interest a border closure. Since the first assembly of the Third Republic in February 1871, which also sat at the Grand-Théâtre de Bordeaux because of war, the

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