He wants to operate in "stages".
Traveling to a school in Melun (Seine-et-Marne) for the start of the school year, the President of the Republic outlined the schedule for deconfinement.
He thus hopes "that we can meet the objective of mid-May for the reopening of the terraces".
In the middle of a question-and-answer session with primary school students from Paul Cézanne de Melun school, Emmanuel Macron hinted at the possibility of delaying the curfew.
To a girl judging "a little annoying" the curfew, he indeed assured that the government would "try to shift it a little, because 7 pm is very early", without specifying a date.
According to our information, this change should not be made immediately, but from mid-May.
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On that date, he wishes to be able to reopen the terraces, as the government had set, as well as cultural places "with limited gauges and privileged access for schoolchildren," he detailed. “We will do opening stages,” said Emmanuel Macron. “There is the stage of May 3, then after there will be mid-May, a stage around the beginning of June I think and then another around mid-end of June. "Each will depend on the results we have obtained," he continued.
The reopening of restaurants would also be done "in stages", in particular according to the incidence rate in the various departments.
"I think that we cannot reopen the restaurants, say at the end of May or in June, in departments where it still circulates a lot", he warned but, "in other (departments) where it has a lot lowered, I think we will have to open them ”.
Government spokesman Gabriel Attal indicated on Monday morning that the president would speak "soon" to the French to "give them the stages of the reopening schedule" of certain terraces and places of culture scheduled for "mid-May ".
Leaving schools open, the executive's choice
Emmanuel Macron arrived shortly after 10 a.m. in this school in Melun, where more than 200 children are educated, to discuss with students, all masked, from a CM2 class, in the company of the Minister of Education Jean-Michel Blanquer .
This start of the school year, which precedes by one week that of face-to-face or half-gauge secondary schools and high schools, is accompanied by a strengthening of the health protocol with in particular the increase in saliva tests as well as the closure of classes as soon as a Covid-19 case is detected.
According to Unesco, France was the European country which has closed its schools the least for a year (March 2020-March 2021) with 10 weeks of closure in total, against 28 in Germany and 47 in the United States, welcomes the Presidency. A choice that Emmanuel Macron defends continuously since the end of the first confinement, despite criticism from part of the medical profession and the opposition.