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Emmanuel Macton: "To be a citizen means to have rights and duties."
Photo: Michel Euler / dpa
France's head of state Emmanuel Macron has defended his choice of words regarding unvaccinated people after heated debates. Macron said he was fully committed to his statements on Friday. One could get upset about formulations that appeared colloquially, but he could not accept that some endangered others in the name of their freedom. "I think it was my responsibility to (...) sound the alarm a little," Macron said. He did this.
In an interview published on Wednesday with the newspaper "Le Parisien", Macron spoke with a clear and sometimes vulgar vocabulary of wanting to annoy unvaccinated people in the corona pandemic to the end. In the interview, Macron had also said with regard to vaccination opponents that an irresponsible person is no longer a citizen. Some of his statements met with fierce criticism in the opposition and in society.
Macron now stated: "To be a citizen means to have rights and duties." The freedom not to be vaccinated stops where it restricts the freedom of others and endangers the lives of others. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also said in a joint press conference with Macron that rights and obligations must go hand in hand. A government must also protect, and the vaccination pass planned in France is a protection for vaccinated people.
The French government wants to introduce drastic restrictions for unvaccinated people in a few days.
They should then no longer have access to cinemas, bars or long-distance trains.
The bill has not yet been passed by parliament.
There had been heated debates about it in the House of Commons.
France is currently hard hit by the pandemic.
The incidence value, i.e. the registered infections per 100,000 people within a week, was last around 2209.
mfh / dpa
