Pierre Gattaz is former Chairman of Medef and Chairman of the Management Board of Radiall.
The Covid-19 crisis affects us collectively.
The second wave is underway and we are all aware and admiring the efforts of caregivers and doctors in this race against time under difficult conditions.
We must continue to be careful, and to show our solidarity, but this control of the spread of this virus, must not lead to the disappearance of what makes up a large part of our collective wealth, I mean shops and restaurants .
I see at least 10 good reasons to let them work.
I always find it preferable to bet on responsibility and intelligence, than on coercion and sanction.
1 / Retailers and restaurateurs are responsible citizens vis-à-vis their employees, but also vis-à-vis their customers.
How can we think that they could not take the necessary measures to protect each other?
Let's define the health protocols that are essential and manageable by these companies, and build on their collective intelligence.
From experience, I always find it preferable to bet on responsibility and intelligence, than on coercion and sanction.
2 / The places of propagation identified were not linked to small businesses or restaurants.
Because health protocols have been respected, as in all companies in France.
Why punish them for doing well?
3 / Traders and restaurateurs are business leaders who have taken risks to get started, to invest, to hire, to often survive, to create, bounce back and develop in an already complicated environment.
They are models of courage and tenacity for all of us and for our young people.
We must consider them as "
heroes of the nation
" and, as such, bet on them, not punish them for their survival.
4 / Without their presence, our towns and villages would neither have the same charm nor the same dynamism.
Let us not forget that they make a key contribution to local economic development, to the wealth of a living area.
5 / Beyond the products and services that they provide to our fellow citizens, they provide an essential and indispensable social link for the strength of our country, especially when it is going through hardships such as this health crisis or terrorism.
Their disappearance would only be the announcement of still greater difficulties to come.
6 / They hire and train, helping to give a job, and therefore hope, dignity, pride and a future to our fellow citizens and our young people.
Double role essential in a France which has an endemic problem of unemployment and which doubts itself.
None of this seems to make sense.
7 / Traders and restaurateurs do not live on aid and subsidies.
They live off customers and activities.
To deprive them of this oxygen is to condemn them in the long term, despite all the aid imagined.
8 / They have been struggling for years with supermarkets and, now, with digital platforms, in a sometimes unbalanced fight.
The example of the closing of some and the opening of others shows this.
The proximity they bring and the human dimension have become essential in a world where the digital transition often rhymes with dehumanization.
These shops and restaurants are our places of life and our humanity.
As such, they are doubly essential.
9 / In our companies, we know very well that we must explain the prohibitions, and make them understandable.
However, there, we forbid the opening of small shops, while we let people congregate in supermarkets, the few "
essential
"
stores
, the subways, the few trains ... None of this seems to make sense. .
10 / We must anticipate other waves in 2021 before we have access to a treatment or a vaccine.
We must therefore find a way to operate that is not a
deadly
stop and go
for these essential small businesses.
So here are 10 good reasons to quickly reverse an incomprehensible and calamitous decision concerning an important part of our economy: more than 700,000 companies and nearly 3 million employees.
There is still time to avoid the worst!