Despite the political crisis created by the controversial speech of Emmanuel Macron, the French Parliament approved this Thursday (6) the bill defended by the president to impose tougher rules on vaccination passports in the country.
Most lawmakers voted in favor of the proposal after an all-night session of heated debate. On the scoreboard, 214 in favor, 93 against and 27 abstentions. In general, those opposed to approval belong to the extremes of the political spectrum, on both the left and the right.
The bill still needs to be approved by the Senate next Monday (10). The government’s initial schedule was, after this stage, to make the new rules come into force on Saturday (15), but it is possible that the term will gain a new date.
Defended by Macron, the text proposes, among other measures, that a new vaccination passport replace the current document, eliminating the option of presenting a test with a negative result for Covid as a health certificate.
The plan is to require everyone over 12 years old to present proof that they have been vaccinated if they want to go to restaurants, museums, gyms, cinemas and public transport.
The project also provides for fines that can reach 50 thousand euros (R$ 322 thousand) to companies that do not adhere to remote work when the government so determines, even if they have the conditions to do so.
There were doubts about the approval of the project after the repercussion of an interview with Macron in the newspaper Le Parisien. “I don’t want to irritate the French. I complain all day when the government gets in their way. But the unvaccinated ones, those I really want to irritate,” said the president, using a French verb that, depending on the context, can be considered a swear word.
The French leader was criticized by political leaders of all spectrums, especially by candidates for the presidency in the election scheduled for the month of April.
For analysts, Macron’s change in tone – who gave a speech on December 31 defending the country’s unity and adopted a much sharper stance four days later – was a calculated political move, not a slip.
Thus, while positioning Macron on the opposite side of far-right candidates such as Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour, who oppose almost any level of restrictions even in the face of the health crisis, the controversial speech helped to expose inconsistencies between other opposition parties. There was, for example, no unity among Republicans in voting on the vaccination pass.
Furthermore, the unusual tone among moderate state leaders has met with mixed reception in public opinion. A poll by the Elabe institute shows that 53% of respondents said they were “shocked” by Macron’s words, against another 47% who saw nothing shocking in what he said.
On another front, Health Minister Olivier Verán emphatically celebrated the fact that more than 66,000 French people received doses of the Covid vaccine – according to government data, the highest number since October 1.
Although there is no evidence to support a possible relationship between Macron’s speech and the high rate of vaccinated in a day, the data reinforces the thesis that the president sought to politically exploit the growing frustration of most French people against those who refuse to receive the immunizer.
It remains to be seen whether the strategy, from an electoral point of view, will work in April, when the French will go to the polls to choose their president. Macron has so far not officially confirmed his candidacy for re-election.
In the same interview in which the French leader took a strong stance against the unvaccinated, a reader of Le Parisien touched on the subject by saying that she could not imagine a scenario without Macron’s participation in the election.
By answering that he is not making a “false thriller” and that he should make an official announcement in the coming weeks, the president left no doubt that he wants to run for another five years at the Élysée Palace.
“If I announce today [a candidatura], what will my ability be to deal with the peak of a health crisis?”, said Macron, taking the cue to try to convey the idea that, for him, the well-being of the French is more important than their electoral ambitions.
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