“Angry and very worried!
"Marcel Benezet, president of the coffee-restaurant branch of the GNI-Synhorcat union, sums up his feelings after the announcement of the new restrictions for Parisian professionals.
And in particular the advancement of the closing times of the bars, which will have to lower the curtain at 10 p.m. at the latest, from Monday.
“We already had one foot in the precipice.
These new measures will drag us there, ”said the representative of cafetiers and restaurateurs who already fears the next step: the“ Marseille syndrome ”and the total closure of establishments which may apply in the capital if the pandemic continues to progress.
READ ALSO>
Paris: parties prohibited, bars closed at 10 p.m. ... the new anti-Covid measures
“Since the start of the health crisis, restaurant owners and cafetiers have been stigmatized.
While the professionals, in their vast majority, strictly respected the imposed health protocol.
Have you seen the metro or the crowded buses?
This is where we get infected!
Or in the spontaneous gatherings of young people on the quays of the Seine, at the Invalides, at the Canal Saint-Martin… If our establishments can no longer function normally, they will be even more numerous ”, he predicts.
Several thousand jobs threatened
Despite the extension of state aid, Marcel Benezet believes that this new turn of the screw could lead, in the short term, to the destruction of 4,000 to 5,000 jobs in Paris alone.
He will participate this Thursday afternoon in a demonstration of coffee makers and brewers in the 11th arrondissement (where administrative closures for non-compliance with the health protocol have multiplied).
Professionals will symbolically place the key to their establishments on the ground.
On the side of the town hall of Paris, it is indicated that the consultation with the police prefecture on the application of the new restrictive measures (concerning bars but also the ban on gatherings of more than 10 people or the lowering of the major events gauge) is just beginning.
City pleads for midnight closure
Mayor Anne Hidalgo had expressed her opposition to the early closure of bars, ahead of the announcements made by the government.
This Thursday morning on BFM TV, she lamented having been faced with a fait accompli.
Covid-19: Anne Hidalgo deplores new measures taken "without consultation" in Paris pic.twitter.com/bwffEIMMbO
- BFM Paris (@BFMParis) September 24, 2020
Now that the decision is made, "we are going to plead for a closure of the bars at midnight rather than at 10 pm", reacts his first deputy Emmanuel Grégoire, who considers that it would have been better "to continue on the path of control and sanctioning minority establishments that do not apply the rules, rather than taking general prohibition measures ”.
"This should not be the coup de grace for the Parisian night, nor its definitive mutation towards underground", meanwhile reacted Frédéric Hocquard, the deputy mayor of Paris in charge of nightlife, in a tweet posted this Thursday morning.
Paris Newsletter
Every morning, the news of your department seen by Le Parisien
I'm registering
Your email address is collected by Le Parisien to enable you to receive our news and commercial offers.
Learn more
VIDEO. Coronavirus: new measures in heightened alert zone