Advertisement

We need your help now

Support from readers like you keeps The Journal open.

You are visiting us because we have something you value. Independent, unbiased news that tells the truth. Advertising revenue goes some way to support our mission, but this year it has not been enough.

If you've seen value in our reporting, please contribute what you can, so we can continue to produce accurate and meaningful journalism. For everyone who needs it.

A protest against the "passe sanitaire" on Saturday. Alamy Stock Photo

France's top constitutional court backs Macron's Covid pass

Around 54% of the French population are fully vaccinated.

FRANCE’S TOP CONSTITUTIONAL authority on today approved a Covid pass that limits access to cafes, restaurants and inter-city trains and planes to people who have been vaccinated or tested negative for the virus.

The controversial pass, which will become ubiquitous from Monday, drew several hundred protesters outside the Council of State in Paris.

“All this undermines fundamental freedoms… Freedom is, first of all, the choice to be vaccinated or not,” said Marie Jose Libeiro, 48.

“We are falling into an authoritarian state.”

But the Constitutional Court said the restrictions put forward by President Emmanuel Macron and approved by parliament last month represented a “balanced trade-off” between public health concerns and personal freedom.

Prime Minister Jean Castex welcomed the court ruling, saying it “will allow the full deployment of our battle strategy against Covid-19″.

The biggest change concerns restaurants which will now have to turn away patrons who fail to produce the health pass.

‘Not police’

“There will be a cost, in terms of time spent checking the pass, and in terms of sales because we will lose customers,” Herve Becam, vice president of the UMIH hotels and restaurants association, told AFP.

Cyril Wafik, manager of the Indiana Cafe in central Paris, said the pass presented yet another challenge for many restaurant owners who were already having trouble getting customers to wear masks.

“We’re not police, that’s not our job,” he told AFP. “This will affect our relationship with our customers.”

Visitors to some shopping centres and department stores will also need the pass, as will visitors to hospitals or care homes and people seeking non-urgent medical care.

But the absence of a health pass must not be an obstacle to patients receiving treatment, the court ruled.

Health workers and others whose job requires them to be in contact with people at risk of Covid must now get vaccinated by law.

But the court rejected as “disproportionate” the government’s wish to force people with Covid infections into isolation for 10 days.

The court’s judges also struck down another provision included in the health law that brought in the Covid pass, which would allow employers to dismiss people on fixed-term or temporary contracts if they don’t have a pass.

The court said this was unfair treatment as employees on open-ended contracts could not be sacked for the same reason.

Staff can, however, be suspended from work without pay if they lack a pass if the nature of their job demands it because, for instance, it brings them into contact with the public.

The health pass will come into force for children aged 12 to 17 on 30 September.

Protests against the health pass assembled around 200,000 people across France on Saturday, and organisers have called for more demonstrations this weekend.

Protesters in Paris today chanted slogans “liberty, liberty” and “Macron, we don’t want your pass.”

There were also protests in Marseille, where several dozen demonstrated in front of the University Hospital Institute against the mandatory vaccination of hospital staff, according to an AFP journalist at the scene.

According to a Montaigne opinion poll this week, 37% of French people sympathise with the demonstrations and 48% are against.

Some 60% approve mandatory vaccinations.

More than 8,000 people are currently being treated for Covid in French hospitals, with about 1,400 in intensive care, the health authorities reported yesterday.

Just under 29,000 new cases were reported in the previous 24 hours.

Some 54% of the French population are now fully vaccinated.

Author
View 17 comments
Close
17 Comments
This is YOUR comments community. Stay civil, stay constructive, stay on topic. Please familiarise yourself with our comments policy here before taking part.
Leave a Comment
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute AnthonyK
    Favourite AnthonyK
    Report
    Oct 1st 2024, 1:52 PM

    A precedence has been set with this. Well meaning as it is. Will not other survivors of state ineffectiveness want something similar.

    60
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute ben wu
    Favourite ben wu
    Report
    Oct 1st 2024, 2:02 PM

    @AnthonyK: At a risk of sounding controversial, I think this should have been dealt with under some form of compensation or redress rather than some blanket thing.
    That it doesn’t preclude future settlements is an odd thing.
    However, I’m more onboard with the Gov actually doing something rather than nothing for those people it’s completely failed.

    36
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Niall English
    Favourite Niall English
    Report
    Oct 1st 2024, 2:00 PM

    maybe hold tony hoolahan to account? no, no, that would be too much to expect of this snide government.

    54
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Jason Memail
    Favourite Jason Memail
    Report
    Oct 1st 2024, 2:03 PM

    @Niall English: What specifically should he be held to account for?

    26
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute ....
    Favourite ....
    Report
    Oct 1st 2024, 2:07 PM

    Are they going to do this for all individuals who have been failed by the state (and how is that defined)? There’s plenty of people who have suffered, including Stardust victims, people who can’t get or afford homes.

    31
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Jason Memail
    Favourite Jason Memail
    Report
    Oct 1st 2024, 2:06 PM

    The amount of misinformation out there around what happened with cervical check is mind-blowing. The way some people talk you’d swear that the testing service actually gave people cancer.

    29
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Brian D'Arcy
    Favourite Brian D'Arcy
    Report
    Oct 1st 2024, 4:58 PM

    @Jason Memail: Quite the opposite, it didn’t tell them that they had cancer so they didn’t receive the treatment they needed, in a nutshell

    13
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Jason Memail
    Favourite Jason Memail
    Report
    Oct 2nd 2024, 12:37 AM

    @Brian D’Arcy: That’s absolutely false, and part of the misinformation that’s common on this subject. 1) These women received tests from cervical check which told them that cancer cells were not present. 2) These women subsequently developed cancer, and a review of their original tests was carried out. 3) The reviews showed that the earlier tests missed what may have been cancerous cells, with these reviews aided by the fact that the reviewers knew what they were looking for, since the patients had developed cancer.

    1
    See 2 more replies ▾
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Jason Memail
    Favourite Jason Memail
    Report
    Oct 2nd 2024, 12:37 AM

    @Jason Memail: 4) The decision was made, and this is the real crux of the issue, not to go back and tell those women that the earlier tests missed the potentially cancerous cells, mainly because what good would it do? They now had cancer and knowing an earlier test missed it wouldn’t change that. 5) Overall, the suggestion that cervical check didn’t tell these people they had cancer is demonstrably false, because the only reason the reviews were carried out on the initial tests is because they had cancer, which they knew about. 6) Going back and checking original tests when something like this happens is standard practice, and the right thing to do in order to improve future testing, but

    3
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Jason Memail
    Favourite Jason Memail
    Report
    Oct 2nd 2024, 12:37 AM

    @Jason Memail: 7) you can argue whether or not it was the right decision not to inform people about what the earlier tests missed, but it would not and could not have changed the fact that they now, sadly, had cancer, and 8) Knowing that an earlier test missed something could not have allowed them to start treatment earlier, because it’s in the oast. 9) If you want to know the specifics of it, I’d suggest checking out care2much on Twitter, who has written some incredibly detailed threads on the subject.

    2
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute silvery moon
    Favourite silvery moon
    Report
    Oct 1st 2024, 4:59 PM

    While this is welcome and like one commentor said that it should have been done with compensation.
    As a survivor of the industrial state/religious run institutions we never got compensation we were give an “Award” as if we won something, we cannot get enhanced medical cards that the survivors from the mother and baby home were afforded, we cannot get a contributary pension even though we had to work in these institutions, we now get another slap in the face by being excluded from theses tax benefits. I live in a council house and am grateful for that, I live with my ill husband and disabled totally dependant 23 year old son was told that I can purchase the house for a minimum of between 60 and 80 thousand euro, cannot get a mortgage as my husband is 70 as the cut off is 69 and we’ve have no where to go to help buy the house so our disabled son would have a roof over his head if anything happened to us.

    6
Submit a report
Please help us understand how this comment violates our community guidelines.
Thank you for the feedback
Your feedback has been sent to our team for review.

Leave a commentcancel

 
JournalTv
News in 60 seconds