Extended health pass? The opposition protests against “an exceptional regime that has become eternal” – The HuffPost

via Associated Press

POLITICS – Tensions at the Palais Bourbon. In a stormy climate, the deputies laboriously began, Tuesday evening, October 19, the examination of a new bill devoted to the Covid crisis, with the possibility of using health pass until July 31. A deadline contested by all the oppositions who denounce an exceptional regime that has now lasted too long.

At the start of the debates on this “health vigilance” text, Olivier Véran called for “not to disarm us even when the virus shows signs of weakness, (to) remain vigilant, actors, active so as not to leave the slightest grip on the virus”.

The Minister of Health stressed that the law will only allow “if the situation requires it” to maintain the health pass until July 31 or to “trigger the state of emergency”, while mainland France is currently living under. a transitional regime for exiting the health emergency. But “the prospect of lightening the pass” remains and will be “examined in mid-November,” assured Olivier Véran.

A “state of exception” which becomes “the norm”

The government also insisted on the importance of the third dose of the vaccine, “fundamental” for the most fragile, over 65 years and sick people: “In the long term, 22 million of our fellow citizens are called upon to receive this reminder”.

The deputies will vote on the extension of the health pass for eight months, by “spanning” the presidential and legislative elections. Only about fifty amendments were examined on Tuesday at first reading, out of some 350 amendments on the program until Wednesday evening.

In this context, elected officials from both right and left criticize a “blank check”, in a “state of exception” which is becoming “the norm”, with a country which for the last six years has lived more than three years under different states of emergency, between the attacks and the health crisis.

LR Philippe Gosselin unsuccessfully defended a motion to reject this “trivialization of the state of emergency”. “This text proposes to step over the national representation because we are suspending our work on February 28. Until proven otherwise, this is not the end of our mandate ”, he pointed out. Communist Karine Lebon denounced a “denial of democracy” and the rebellious Mathilde Panot of decisions taken at the option of “orders and counter-orders from Jupiter”.

“This text proposes that we step over the national representation for 10 months, until July 31, 2022”, is indignant @phgosselin. The suspension of parliamentary work at the end of February, with a view to the presidential election # 2022, does not justify such a decision, he indicates.#DirectANpic.twitter.com/tL3gnueaes

– LCP (@LCP) October 19, 2021

“This bill extends a so-called temporary exception regime, but which has become eternal so much so that a child born in 2015 will have spent three quarters of his life under a regime of this nature”, protested the leader of the LFI deputies at the Palais Bourbon.

“Is it prudent to maintain (a regime of exit from) the state of health emergency beyond the presidential election?”, For his part, questioned the UDI Michel Zumkeller, at the center right, adding: “We don’t know who is going to be elected, imagine that it is an extremist.”

The Constitutional Council should be seized by the oppositions if the bill does not evolve over the parliamentary shuttle, scheduled until early November. “It’s the health pass for life,” criticized the RN presidential candidate Marine Le Pen.

An internal sling?

“If we remove any possibility of using the health pass (…), the only alternative to an epidemic resurgence would be the closure of establishments or the return to confinement”, retorts the LREM reporter Jean-Pierre Pont.
Tuesday afternoon, several hundred opponents gathered near the Palais Bourbon, at the call of pro-Frexit activist Florian Philippot and in the presence of MP Martine Wonner, muse of covidosceptics.

In the hemicycle, the majority will have to keep an eye on its own troops. In the Laws Committee, the LREM deputy of Paris Pacôme Rupin, resolute opponent to the pass, seized the government project by narrowly passing an amendment which provides for limiting the use of the pass geographically.

Unsurprisingly, the LREM group plans to return to the national logic of the pass, while taking into account several criteria that “walkers” want to specify to justify the use of the pass: vaccination rate, positivity of screening tests, d incidence or saturation of intensive care beds – with levels to be defined.

Ultimately, the validity of the pass for those over 65 and the most vulnerable could also be subject to the injection of a third dose of vaccine. “It’s a possibility,” according to government spokesman Gabriel Attal. The executive is also preparing to defend an amendment allowing school directors to access the vaccination status of students. The aim is to “strengthen the vaccination campaigns”, argues Olivier Véran. Enough to promise new eruptive debates.