Europe, with more closures, backs down in tourism 1:16
(CNN) - At first, the front lines of Europe's fight against the COVID-19 pandemic was fought in hospitals by overloaded health workers. Now that the countries of Europe seek to avoid the much dreaded second wave, that line has moved to the streets and is served by police forces.
In the last week, several European countries registered record rates of infection. Since the spring, countries like France, Germany, Italy and Spain had not seen such a large increase in the number of new cases. Countries like Greece and Croatia, which largely did not see the first wave, saw rapid increases in August as tourists, taking advantage of the reopening of Europe's internal borders in June, headed to the beach for their summer holidays.
With authorities determined to avoid a second wave of lockdowns, legislation has been introduced to try to stop the spread of the virus. Nightclubs in Italy and Greece were closed, curfews were enacted in Spain, Italy and Greece, and masks have been made mandatory in an increasing number of public outdoor spaces in most EU countries. : a gradual tightening of regulations that will now have to be in force. The fight against covid-19 has become, in recent weeks in Europe, a matter of public order.
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Until recently, many of the regulations applied to indoor businesses and were enforced by owners, or to public transportation, where they were enforced by the drivers themselves. Across Europe, there were reports of difficulties in enforcing the rules of masks, from passengers who refused to use them had to disembark from the 'vaporettos', the small boats that transport tourists through the canals of Venice, to the tragic death in France of a bus driver in July, who died after being attacked by passengers who had been asked to put on masks.
Now that the obligations on wearing masks are extended into the open and their forces are shifting to the police, there is a sense of relief from many of those who had previously been in charge. "We were on the front line," says Damien Cospanza, a bus driver in Marseille, southern France, where the wearing of masks became mandatory throughout the city on Tuesday.
“Unfortunately, people must be afraid. They must be fined so they understand that it is mandatory, especially in a city like Marseille. People don't listen much to a driver, but they do listen to the police.
But if the burden has shifted from drivers and merchants to the police, there is now a question of long-term overload, as regulations tighten and the number of cases continues to grow.
The police are now imposing the use of masks in cities like Marseille to curb the increase in covid infections.
The police spread out on many fronts
On Thursday, the French prime minister announced that masks, already mandatory in some parts of Paris, would be mandatory throughout the city. "It is not enough to create new laws, they must also be respected," said Jean Castex. Since August 17, he said, 30,000 police checks have been carried out on businesses, 1,900 fines have been imposed and 53 establishments have been closed.
In Marseille, a tourist hub where the obligation to wear an outdoor mask was extended to the entire city on Tuesday, a special team of national police officers was dispatched to help local forces enforce the new rules.
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As CNN followed officers through the old Marseille port last week, the unit's commander, Jean-Marc Cortes, explained that his job was more about helping people understand the new rules, rather than imposing the fine of 135 euros (159 dollars) to those who do not comply. "If there were no police on the street enforcing the rule," he said, "people would use it less. When they see us, they are reminded that it is mandatory and often enough.
People wearing masks stroll through the old port of Marseille on Wednesday.
But already, two weeks after masks became mandatory outdoors in France, 700 fines are issued a day, by an already overloaded police force that has had to deal with terrorism and mass protests in recent years. "We have had the yellow vests and now it is the covid", says Eric Moulin, regional secretary of the UNSA police union, "and while we are busy with these missions we cannot also fight against other crimes such as crime ... and that is ours main role, fight against general crime. And that is going to require more resources.
In June, French police forces staged several demonstrations, calling for more government support and resources, as protests inspired in part by the Black Lives Matter movement raised new concerns about the methods used in several recent French cases of alleged police brutality. .
Also in 2018, there were police protests requesting more resources, some of them illegally held. Moulin says it's a good measure of the frustration of grassroots police officers, now compounded by their added responsibilities. At the beginning of France's lockdown in March, it was only the threat of a police strike that prompted the authorities to hand over the protective equipment officers had requested.
Catalan police officers ask a woman to wear a mask on Las Ramblas in Barcelona, Spain, on July 9, 2020.
Part of the problem is how confusing the new rules can be. With only a few neighborhoods affected by the new regulations and little reminding tourists of their boundaries, it can be difficult to know when you're leaving an area where you don't have to wear a mask and entering one where it's required. Take for example the 7th district of Marseille, where masks are mandatory from August 10. On the seashore, on the promenade, the masks were being searched by the police, but immediately below them, on the busy Les Catalans beach, there were few masks in sight. The officers explained that although the obligation to wear the masks also technically applied to the beach, it would simply be too difficult to enforce given the large number of sunbathers.
There are also variations in the levels of application of the new rules, both within and between EU countries. "There are no orders [at national level] on masks, it is case by case, depending on the orders of the local prefects," said Christophe Crépin, speaking on behalf of the "policiers en colère" or "angry policemen" of France.
“Sometimes there is repression, sometimes prevention, sometimes education. We do not carry out police checks on 'good people' from 'good families' in the pleasant suburbs, but we do them on the streets of Marseille, "added Crépin.
Few extra resources
Despite the open borders of Europe, there are also variations in the application of the various rules of the bloc. This is the case of Italy, the original epicenter of the European outbreak, which has so far had more than twice as many cases as Belgium. And yet, every day 100 fines are issued for the use of masks in Brussels alone, according to the Belgian police; and the overall figure for all of Italy is around 40, according to the Italian Interior Ministry.
In Spain, which has the highest infection rates in Western Europe at the moment, the prime minister announced new regulations this week, including closing nightclubs and a partial ban on smoking outdoors. Pedro Sánchez also announced that 2,000 military personnel would be deployed to help with contact tracing. Sánchez also gave the regions the power to declare local states of emergency.
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In Greece, a country that largely escaped Europe's first wave, police controls have also been intensified. Last Friday 59,882 controls were carried out and 560 violations of the mask or social distancing norm were registered, according to local press reports. Several fines were also imposed on companies that did not respect the midnight curfew. Overall, in August, 7,414 rapes were recorded across the country for various crimes ranging from not wearing a mask in public places to operating businesses beyond designated curfews.
In most countries, little has been announced in terms of additional resources or changes in police strategies. In sum, the application of the new regulations appears to fall on the shoulders of ordinary police officers. The UK Home Office says 6,000 additional police officers will be recruited by March 2021. But these were part of an earlier campaign to increase the number; they are not linked to the application of regulations against covid. A spokesperson told CNN that the job of the police was to enforce the law, whether related to the coronavirus or not.
The danger of growing pushback from Europeans as regulations tighten could also lead to increased pressure on police resources. In Germany, large protests were held across the country on August 1, with some of the 20,000 protesters gathered in Berlin, shouting "we are the second wave" and "resistance." The new protests that were scheduled for Saturday have been banned, and authorities have warned that the police will intervene if someone takes to the streets. A German police spokesman told CNN that around 3,000 police officers would be deployed on Saturday to ensure health regulations are being met.
The police enforce the use of mandatory face masks at the train station in Essen, Germany, on Monday, August 24.
During the first wave of the European coronavirus outbreak, with clear messages from authorities and health systems on the brink of collapse, there was little pushback to the measures taken to try to stop its spread.
Now, with healthcare systems no longer threatened and mortality rates lower, the question of how well to regulate daily life becomes a question of risk management. And for authorities that could prove to be more political and much more difficult with an increasingly reluctant public facing an ever-increasing burden of regulations.
At the moment, it is too early to know if the new rules will help authorities reverse the deteriorating COVID numbers. But until they do so, authorities across Europe will continue to strike the right balance between protecting public health and continuing to infringe on people's civil liberties, with police walking the fine line between the two.
Nadine Schmidt of CNN in Berlin contributed to this report.
covid-19 Europe