It’s finally voted! After the twist of Monday evening, when the deputies refused to continue examining the bill transforming the health pass into a vaccination pass, and that of Tuesday evening, where a suspension of the session was requested, in reaction to the comments Emmanuel Macron in our pages, the text was finally adopted by the National Assembly early this Thursday morning by 214 votes to 93, and 27 abstentions.
Interrupted Monday at midnight after a majority vote of the deputies, this examination was quickly put back on the agenda after a day of heated tussles between the majority and the opposition. Gabriel Attal had denounced Tuesday a “form of friendly irresponsibility” and a “procedural step”, while defending himself from any amateurism of the majority.
Decried presidential remarks
Tuesday, new twist. A few hours after the resumption of the debates, the publication of an interview with Emmanuel Macron in front of our readers once again ignited the powder. The Assembly is electrified, requests, in vain, the arrival of Jean Castex and requests for suspension of sessions multiply, until the chairman of the session, Marc Le Fur, decides to ring the end of the debates for the night. The meeting resumed on Wednesday, shortly before 3 p.m., with the Prime Minister’s explanations to elected officials at the end of the afternoon.
This text “responds to the epidemic recovery in an efficient, graduated manner. He made the choice of science “and” of responsibility “, had insisted Monday the Minister of Health Olivier Véran, while France has just crossed several times the bar of 300,000 new daily cases. The law “strengthening the tools for managing the health crisis” was initially due to come into force on January 15.
To cope with this surge, the government has therefore decided to put even more pressure on the nearly five million unvaccinated French people over the age of 12 who, for want of being able to justify a vaccination status, will no longer have access to leisure activities, restaurants and bars, fairs or interregional public transport. This is the big difference with the health pass, since a negative test will no longer suffice, except for access to health establishments and services.
“Avoid much more coercive measures”
To have a complete vaccination schedule, Olivier Véran announced that, from February 15, he will have to perform his booster dose four months – and no longer seven – after his second dose, specifying that an infection is always equivalent to an injection. According to the LREM president of the Law Commission, Yaël Braun-Pivet, the vaccination pass will “avoid much more coercive measures”, such as confinements or curfews.
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Regarding the text itself, it also provides for tougher sanctions against false passes. Thus, the possession of a false vaccination pass will henceforth be punishable by five years of imprisonment and a fine of 75,000 euros. Presenting a pass belonging to someone else or transmitting a pass to someone else with a view to its fraudulent use will be punished by a fixed fine of 1,000 euros, compared to 135 euros today. Managers of establishments open to the public will be able to verify identities themselves. The measure provoked lively discussions in committee, right and left judging the device “unmanageable”.