The town hall of Paris persists and signs.
Thursday evening, Jean Castex had warned that "
consultations
" would be initiated with local elected officials in twenty departments in which the health situation is considered worrying, with a view to establishing possible new restrictions in place from March 6.
Anne Hidalgo's team wasted no time in answering him: a few hours after the Prime Minister spoke, the mayor's first deputy, Emmanuel Grégoire, announced that the town hall was going to move forward the 'hypothesis of a 3-week confinement in the capital in order to "
have the prospect of reopening everything
" at its end, including bars, restaurants and cultural places.
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For the elected official, this hard confinement would "
really give oxygen and have the prospect of reopening everything in three weeks
", once the epidemic has receded.
In the evening, Emmanuel Grégoire clarified that this confinement would in reality concern not Paris, but the whole of Île-de-France, which "
implies a broad dialogue in the days to come
".
“
This option makes no sense for Paris alone,
” he stressed.
Friday morning, new details were given at a press point held by the first deputy in the town hall.
The town hall first observes that the health situation is worsening day by day: "
the figures are not good and the trends are even less good
", underlined Emmanuel Grégoire.
Paris adheres "
fully to the method proposed
" by the Prime Minister, based on dialogue with local elected officials.
The local executive therefore wants to formulate its own hypotheses and suggestions to bring water to the government mill.
"
It would take a miracle
" for the health situation to improve rapidly
"
The country has lived under strong constraints for a long time,
" recalled the first deputy, citing the curfew, active for 140 days, and restaurants, closed for nearly four months.
Three scenarios are therefore formulated: either the health situation improves next week, which would require "
a miracle
".
Either the epidemic is stagnating, in which case only a few additional adjustment measures would be necessary, including compulsory teleworking, acceleration of vaccination and improvement of screening in companies and in schools.
Either the situation worsens dramatically, in which case "
we must be able to calmly ask ourselves the question of the effectiveness of the measures
" in place.
"
We need to think about the idea of making greater efforts in the short term
", if these are accompanied by a "
prospect of reopening everything more quickly, rather than staying under a curfew for months and months
”, pleaded Emmanuel Grégoire.
"
Half-measures
" risk being ineffective: "
we would not like to find ourselves in a situation where, in the face of degradation, we would only take additional half-measures, only delaying a form of inevitability of a harder confinement
, ”he justified.
The town hall refuses the strategy of a curfew during the week, followed by confinement at the weekend, in force in Nice: "
we cannot take public action solely through the prism of economic activity and the model productivist of our civic lives
”, rose the first deputy, for whom this measure is“
extremely restrictive in terms of daily life and inefficient
”from a health point of view.
Instead, Anne Hidalgo therefore intends to put on the table the hypothesis of a harsher confinement, in the event of the worsening of the situation, in order to put an end, once this ordeal has passed, to the chain of restrictions accumulated since several months, which represent "
extremely strong economic and moral constraints
".
Behind, “
protocols of generalized reopening
” must be thought out, to “
project positively
” and “
give back hope and visibility
”, both to professionals and to citizens.
However, it will be up to the government to decide, it alone can validate confinement.
"
We think that the policy of half-measures, with very questionable results, is a form of end of cycle
", judged Emmanuel Grégoire.
Hoping that the situation improves quickly, the right arm of Anne Hidalgo clarified that the three-week confinement was "
not a request on their part
", but a "
hypothesis
" that would be put forward, in order to find a life about normal next spring.
Conversely, to chain the half-measures is a "
form of wait-and-see
", which "
tests the patience of our fellow citizens
", sanctioned the deputy.
The opposition and the dubious government
The hypothesis of confinement does not, however, win the support of opponents of the socialist team: "
I am stunned by Anne Hidalgo's contempt for the district mayors who are elected
", the mayor immediately criticized (LR) of the 17th arrondissement, Geoffroy Boulard.
The boss of the region, Valérie Pécresse, for her part qualified the track of measures taken at the departmental level "
as illusions
".
The government, meanwhile, wants to give a chance to dialogue with local elected officials.
"
Any proposal deserves to be studied and that of the mayor of Paris will be studied
", said Friday morning the spokesperson for the executive, Gabriel Attal, on France Info.
However, he quickly clarified that he was skeptical about the effectiveness of such a measure, assuring that he saw "
very few, if any scientists, say that in three weeks we can defeat the virus and reopen everything
".