The wave is rising, and the executive is preparing possible restrictions for the French until spring: the extension of the state of health emergency will be scrutinized on Saturday in the National Assembly, where oppositions criticize the use in long course of this "atomic weapon".
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For this text presented Wednesday in the Council of Ministers and examined at the Palais Bourbon in first reading at no charge, the deputies are ready to sit until Sunday evening, in a hemicycle where their presence is limited to 50% because of the coronavirus epidemic.
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The government has just extended the curfew to 54 departments and Polynesia, or 46 million French people concerned.
To apply this measure, it is based on the state of health emergency, reestablished by decree a week ago throughout the territory.
This exceptional regime had already been applied between March and early July for the first wave of coronavirus, and had allowed the confinement of the population or drastic restrictions on travel.
However, beyond one month, the extension of this plan must be authorized by law.
Hence this text, which provides for an end to February 16 next evening, but also restrictions still possible until April 1.
The bill will be on the menu of the Senate from Wednesday and should be definitively adopted in early November.
A "graduated and territorial response"
Faced with the epidemic which "has flared in the vast majority of our country", as noted by the Minister of Health Olivier Véran, the executive is implementing a "graduated and territorial response".
On Thursday, Prime Minister Jean Castex seemed to prepare minds for even more difficult times: if the epidemic is not contained, the government will have to "consider much harsher measures", he said, while several countries, such as Ireland, have just decided on reconfinements.
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In detail, the bill provides for an extension for three months of the health emergency, which may however be lifted in advance if the situation improves.
In order to have “intervention options” beyond, an emergency exit regime is programmed until April 1, allowing restrictions but less.
The period includes regional and departmental elections, a sensitive subject.
Article 3 is the translation of the “test, trace, isolate” strategy, argues rapporteur Jean-Pierre Pont (LREM), with the extension until April 1 of digital systems for collecting test results and people. contacts.
Finally, the bill should make it possible to give the government very broad authority to issue ordinances in the fields of labor law, the functioning of administrations and even communities, as last spring.
In committee, however, MEPs reduced the authorization period.
Because if most political groups support the extension of the state of health emergency, they deplore that it is so long and refuse to give a “blank check” to the government.
"National unity"
"We are ready to line up behind national unity" but "it is made by regular debate", underlines the communist Stéphane Peu.
But, we answer at LREM, the duration is "adapted and proportionate", while the winter promises to be "difficult", pending a vaccine against the coronavirus.
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LR deputies question the need at this stage for a state of health emergency, which is "the atomic weapon" in the words of Philippe Gosselin.
Is the objective "generalized containment"?
"The government must put this element on the table", he claims.
Even within the majority, questions are emerging, as at Agir where Dimitri Houbron spoke in committee of the "fear of an erosion of social acceptability" of the measures taken by the government, from the curfew to the closures of some establishments.
The rebels do not have "confidence in the management of the government" in view of the first wave and could vote against the prorogation.
Between the "delays" at start-up and "the shortage of masks, screening strategies", there was "more than a mess", according to Danièle Obono, who calls for "more rigor, consistency, anticipation for the next few months ”.
