After the agitation, the concern for appeasement.
Enamelled with incidents in the National Assembly last week, the debates on the vaccination pass began Tuesday afternoon, in the chamber of the Senate, to a senator's train.
"The senator's train is the wisdom train,"
the President of the Chamber, Gérard Larcher, insisted a few hours earlier on France Inter.
The government would have preferred that the Senate consider its bill as of last Thursday, in the name of the
"health emergency"
, but the senators assume to slow the pace.
Even if it means forcing the government to review its objective of coming into force on January 15.
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The senatorial majority (The Republicans and their allies of the centrist Union) made a point of giving themselves time, in order to introduce corrective measures in this bill aimed at transforming the health pass into a vaccination pass.
"I would like the Senate to vote on this amended text
," Gérard Larcher warned last Thursday, in an interview with
Le Figaro
.
"As useful as it may be"
, the vaccine pass
"does not respond"
to the
"health emergency"
, added Tuesday the rapporteur (LR) of the bill in the Senate, Philippe Bas, citing
"the disorder to at school, at work and at the hospital ”
.
Combine "health requirements", "respect for freedoms" and "parliamentary control"
The right-wing senators, with the support of most of the oppositions, first intend to frame the vaccination pass over time.
An amendment to this effect was adopted on Monday by the Law Committee.
According to this "automatic shutdown" mechanism, the vaccination pass could only be imposed on one condition: if the number of hospitalizations linked to Covid-19 is greater than 10,000 patients nationally - they amount to nearly 23,000 to date, according to health authorities.
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Below this threshold, the device could only be maintained in certain departments: where more than 80% of the population is fully vaccinated, or where the incidence rate is
"high".
It is a question of combining
"health requirements"
,
"respect for freedoms"
and
"parliamentary control"
, indicates Philippe Bas. But this arrangement is contested by the executive, Olivier Véran opposing any
“rigid”
threshold .
“We are faced with situations which, wave after wave, are unpredictable. Who could have predicted that one day we would have 350,000 contaminations in 24 hours? "
, replied the Minister of Health to the senators.
Another central adjustment concerns minors.
The senators excluded them in committee from any obligation to present the vaccination pass, while the government wishes to impose them.
According to the Senate scenario, 12-17 year olds would only be subject to the health pass.
Arguing the same objective of simplifying the device, the senatorial majority supervised identity checks by establishment managers: a permit or a Vitale card could be sufficient, depending on the version adopted in committee.
Another modification, the senators removed the maximum fines for companies not respecting the rules of teleworking - up to 1000 euros per employee, 50,000 euros per company.
Do not fall into the "trap of divisions"
Despite these adjustments, the Socialists were keen to defend another project: the vaccine obligation.
A means of
"resting"
this constraint
"on the State and not on the unvaccinated"
, according to the leader of the Socialist senators, Patrick Kanner.
Opposed to a
"liberticidal control society"
, environmentalists and communists should vote against the text almost unanimously.
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In the ranks of LR, more than twenty elected should reject the text.
Mouthpiece of these protesting senators, Muriel Jourda pleaded to "
convince the elderly to go get vaccinated"
rather than
"to run all the risks of a vaccine after all quite recent to our children."
But the right-wing senators hope not to repeat the confusion expressed by their counterparts in the Assembly.
When the text was voted on last Thursday, LR deputies were divided into three thirds - votes “for”, “against” and abstentions.
Three months before the presidential election, the senatorial right has promised not to fall into the
"trap of divisions"
set, according to it, by the government.
