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Angry with the health pass, shopping centers offer to "vaccinate a million people per week"

2021-07-24T20:29:04.590Z


The managers of shopping centers wrote this weekend to the Minister of Health to refuse the application of the health pass and tend the


Concerns and drumbeats this Saturday, for traders and customers of the 344 largest shopping centers in France. Will they have to show their health pass from August 1 to be able to access it? The measure, delicate, and which has been the subject of friction in the National Assembly, will be debated this Sunday in a joint committee. And for good reason: after the adoption of the bill relating to the management of the health crisis with 117 votes for and 86 against in the National Assembly, the Senate, dominated by the right, announced its intention to relax a text " unnecessarily repressive ”. According to the opinion of the Council of State - which considered that the extension of the sanitary pass to shopping centers poses a problem "for the acquisition of basic necessities" -,it excluded shopping centers from places affected by the health pass. But what will be the result of this commission whose mission is to achieve the reconciliation of the two assemblies on a common text? Mystery.

"Gérard Larcher

(Editor's note: the president of the Senate)

is very keen on a compromise," indicates a senator.

It would guarantee the Marchers a Republican vote and would not change the nature of the law.

If there is no agreement, it is the National Assembly, where LREM has the majority, which will have the last word on the issue.

But without waiting for this moment, lobbyists and industry professionals are throwing all their strength into the battle.

"We are part of the solution"

"In return for a non-obligation to present the health pass, we are offering the Ministry of Health to install vaccination centers in all of our 21 shopping centers," Anne-Sophie Sancerre, Director General, reveals to our newspaper. Southern Europe of Unibail-Rodamco Westfiel (URW), which operates the Forum des Halles in Paris, Les 4 temps in La Défense, and La Part-Dieu in Lyon.

"If we vaccinate 500 people per day in all the shopping centers targeted by this measure, we could reach 1 million people per week," she calculates.

We are part of the solution, many unvaccinated young people that we can sensitize come to us.

We also propose to carry out random checks and to strengthen communication campaigns for vaccination (…) Unlike restaurants, she continues, the mask is compulsory there, the gauge of customers is ensured and the quality of the air measured.

"

To read also "We wonder how we are going to apply it": shopping centers still angry with the health pass

Gontran Thüring, the general delegate of the National Council of shopping centers (CNCC), which represents all the 800 centers in the territory, is strangled especially in front of the amount of the invoice that a binding device would generate. “It takes 30,000 euros per month for the control of a single front door. Can you imagine a shopping center with ten entrances? In total, more than 5,000 agents would have to be recruited, ”assures the one who, with his colleagues, wrote an open letter to the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, which we publish.

According to estimates by Anne-Sophie Sancerre, the overall cost of a health pass control device would amount to “5 million euros per month for each shopping center. "And then, they emphasize:" There will inevitably be tensions with those who do not want a health pass. "

Contacted, the entourage of the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, who threatened several times this week to "close these large centers" in the event of an epidemic "outbreak", indicates that "discussions are underway" to this subject, without further comments. Accusations which made the CNCC jump to the point of causing the sending on Saturday of an open letter to the minister, the content of which we are publishing on our website. “No, the alternative is not between sanitary pass and closing shopping centers,” they write, qualifying the closures as “discriminatory measures”.

For the boss of the socialist senators, Patrick Kanner, present in committee this Saturday: "We need consistency: either the government considers that a shopping center is a city within a city and that the health pass is not compulsory for there. enter, or he decides outright to close non-essential businesses.

"

The open letter from the CNCC to Olivier Véran, Minister of Health

Minister,

We denounce the comments you made this week in Parliament against shopping centers during the examination of the bill relating to the management of the health crisis. You said “the shopping centers we are talking about, most of them are located in the suburbs, in peri-urban areas, where there is vaccine coverage that is weaker, where people congregate, especially populations. young people, on weekends, very numerous, there where things are blazing. So these are the places that we are going to close first. And so again it's the same logic, sanitary pass or closure. "

The National Council of Shopping Centers denounces the attitude of the Government which stigmatizes shopping centers and misinforms about them.

In this health crisis, the French deserve a policy based on science and law, not on ideological symbols and approximations.

These words oblige us to call on you to re-establish some facts.

Yes to the health pass.

No to the arbitrary pass!

No, shopping malls are not places of “brewing”.

We do not contaminate it.

Admit it, the notion of "brewing" is quite unscientific.

In eighteen months, the epidemiology of Covid-19 has made enough progress to use all the science available on the spread of the virus in closed environments.

Several French studies, such as those of the Pasteur Institute and international ones have amply demonstrated it: shopping centers are not places of propagation of the virus. The reinforced health protocol put in place with the Government for shopping centers was defined with the support of the CNRS and the Bureau Véritas scientific committee: the mask is compulsory, the density of customers is low and closely monitored with an automatic count. at the doors to check the gauges, the air is completely renewed several times per hour and CO2 probes continuously measure its quality.

A shopping center is not a restaurant, a bar, a nightclub, a theater, or a train.

It is not because it welcomes a lot of people that we are contaminated there.

It is probably the safest type of public establishment there is.

Like city centers, more than 80% of customers come from proximity.

Moreover, no other country has imposed the health pass in shopping centers, having such an impact on the daily life of its population.

No, the alternative is not between health pass and closing shopping centers.

In reality, there are a multitude of other solutions for these everyday places.

The Government has the choice to identify the real sources of contamination, the choice to admit that no shopping center has ever been a cluster, the choice to replace gauges as we did during the 3rd deconfinement , the choice to set up vaccination centers there and the choice to aim for efficiency rather than symbolism.

In reality, not all shopping centers are in "suburbs", a caricatured and stigmatizing vision.

A good part of the shopping centers are in the city centers, in particular nested in the transport network, which will make a systematic control inapplicable, source of disorganization and disturbances to the public order.

In reality, it is discriminatory to target peripheral shopping centers, their visitors and in particular young people, who are less vaccinated, because they only had access to vaccination from May 31, when caregivers had access. from last December and are targeted for September 15.

If Parisians have the right to do their shopping on the Champs-Élysées, how can we legally prevent other people from doing their shopping, essential or not, in shopping centers?

No, having closed shopping centers at each confinement is not a good reference.

You indicate that the centers were closed at the end of January to contain the 3rd wave, and that this is proof that we must apply the health pass to them. This decision was unfounded, we denounced it. The closure of shopping centers of more than 20,000 m² has proved ineffective, which was to be expected when they represent barely 5% of retail locations. Territorialized measures were announced on February 22 and most of the French ended up being re-defined on March 18. This is also the reason why, during the 3rd deconfinement, the Government ended up treating large shopping centers like any other, recognizing that it is not the size of the building that counts, but the density of people that counts. is there.

If the situation worsens, we can operate on the basis of enhanced gauge.

No, the Government did not take into account the opinion of the Council of State.

Seized of the bill, the Council of State recommended in its opinion to the Government to remove the provision which extends the health pass to shopping centers, judging that it was not effective and that it was a source of inequality.

The Government claim to have taken this advice into account.

The proposed adjustment only responds to part of the Council of State's criticism.

MEPs tabled 12 amendments to remove the measure.

Senators deleted it.

But the Government persists.

Mr. Minister, shopping centers are places of passage, not of mixing.

They are not the problem in the health crisis, they are part of the solution.

It is time to recognize that this measure must be removed from the bill, because it is simply ineffective, without scientific basis and because it is a source of discrimination for our malls, our merchants, our employees and our customers.

Above all, we ask for the acceleration of the deployment of vaccination centers in all major shopping centers in order to massify and democratize the campaign.

Today only a few centers are equipped to vaccinate 500 to 1,500 people per day: if the 400 largest shopping centers targeted by this measure were to vaccinate only 500 people per day, in 5 days, they would have already vaccinated 1 million of French !

Source: leparis

All business articles on 2021-07-24

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