The French senate on Wednesday will debate and vote on a revised bill that will officially end exceptional measures put in place during the Covid pandemic on 1 August, including an end to the possibility of reviving the vaccine pass at the border.
During debates in the National Assembly over the bill, lawmakers removed a key measure that would allow the government to reintroduce a health pass at France’s borders.
The article was voted down by an alliance of hard-right National Rally and Republicans (LR) deputies, along with the majority of the leftist Nupes alliance, dealing a first blow to President Emmanuel Macron and his government after legislative elections in June.
Macron has now called on the Senate’s “wisdom” to reestablish a bill that would “allow us to stay the course”. Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne called Senators’ “spirit of responsibility”
However, the Senate, dominated by the right, is unlikely to want to do Macron any favours.
"Out of the question to reestablish the removed article the way the government has written it,” warned the president of the LR group in the Senate, Bruno Retailleau.
LR Senator Philippe Bas has rewritten a version of the article to try to find a compromise, which would allow for "a much more limited” health pass at the borders. This would allow France to ask for a negative Covid test from those arriving from abroad.
The Senator has rebaptised this as “a travel health certificate”, to distinguish it clearly from the health pass that had been asked for in cafes and restaurants and other public places.
The Senate’s version of the bill makes explicit the end to limits to movement, such as confinements and curfews, and more importantly, it opens the door to unvaccinated nurses and health workers to go back to work – a measure that the academy of medicine still opposes.
In the bill, vaccine requirements for health workers would be suspended as soon as it is justified by the evolution of the pandemic or “medical and scientific knowledge” permits it.
Once the bill is voted on by the Senate, senators and deputies in the National Assembly will meet Thursday to hash out a common text that will need to be voted on by both chambers.
(with AFP)
