Macron to the French: A vaccine or another

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PARIS – Emmanuel Macron is back on the cusp. Not winning an election of any kind, he embarked on a wild political adventure in 2016 and a year later, at the age of 39, became French President. Now, nine months into the next election, this leader who had no qualms about the concentration of power has decided to try to force a people steeped in the values ​​of freedom to get vaccinated against the coronavirus.

In response to an increase in cases of the highly contagious delta variant, Mr Macron paused, in an address to the nation on Monday, shortly before mandatory blanket vaccinations were imposed, but made clear that the lives of unvaccinated French people would quickly become miserable, potentially restricting their travel and even their ability to sit down to eat Coffee or dinner out with friends.

He used a large wand, personifying power in a way that in the past has led to criticism of him as a Jupiter-like figure.

If there has always been a tension in France between its state-directed Jacobin instincts and its Enlightenment embodiment of individual liberty, this was the case of the president making law and asking citizens to stand in line or otherwise.

“If you want to be free and responsible, you vaccinate — your choice and your consequences,” said Jacques Rubinick, a professor of political science. That was the president’s message. However, the danger is a dual or two-speed community.”

This danger was explicitly expressed by Michelle Rivasi, a green MEP with a history of vaccination skepticism, who declared, “This is apartheid in the land of human rights.”

It appears that more than 2.2 million people who have registered for the vaccination in the 48 hours since Mr Macron spoke do not agree with Ms Rivasi. Their haste suggested that all the French needed to get the vaccine was a boost of a kind hitherto unseen.

Certainly, nowhere was such presidential indictment shown in April when Mr Macron declared that a health passport would “never be a right of entry that discriminates between the French”. His health minister, Olivier Veran, meanwhile noted that France has a “passion for equality” and that it is “almost inconceivable that when places reopen, they will not reopen for everyone”.

The delta variable bury such commitments and predictions.

In France, from August 1, anyone who does not have a “health permit” showing they have been vaccinated or have recently tested negative will not be accepted into restaurants, cafes or cinemas, and will not be able to travel long distances by train, Mr Macron said.

Many tests will stop being free in the fall to “encourage vaccination” before then. For health workers, if they are not vaccinated by September 15, they face salary suspensions and even dismissal.

Among the European Union countries, only Greece and Italy have made vaccination mandatory for health workers.

Opposition politicians, especially from the far right and the left, have been highly critical of Macron’s shift in leadership. “Indecent brutality,” Marine Le Pen, the right-wing leader, said in a Twitter post, in response to the warning to health workers. For Jean-Luc Melenchon, who leads a far-left party, this was the work of a “presidential monarchy”.

updated

July 14, 2021, 4:14 p.m. ET

The spectacle of far-right and far-left defenders of French “liberties,” while centrist liberals embraced top-down discipline, was extraordinary. Overall, Mr Macron’s gamble appears to have been successful.

The free choice of the common good is something to which the French respond. It is a feeling of freedom and brotherhood.

The explicit imposition of mandatory insemination could have been more provocative. However, Macron did not rule out this final step as the price of France’s post-Covid status.

“I am relieved that there is someone at the helm at the end,” said sociologist Nicole Bacharan. “I definitely felt that way.”

Vaccination was off in France where polls last year indicated that more than half of French people were against vaccination. A section of the population tends to theorize and is skeptical of anything imposed by the “elites” and has resisted the idea that vaccination is the best response to the pandemic. About 36 percent of the population is now fully vaccinated, and just over half have received at least one dose.

For Macron, the political calculations of his risk-taking may have seemed solid. In many ways, his speech was like announcing his candidacy for the 2022 election. A fourth wave of the pandemic later this year after France has already gone through three national lockdowns will almost certainly dent his chances of re-election.

He said a strong economic recovery is underway. And it will not survive the renewed closure of shops and companies and another curfew.

The president’s decision put France ahead of most European countries in making vaccination semi-compulsory. Britain, where many people have already been vaccinated, is moving in the opposite direction. Despite a similar rise in variable delta cases, it is on its way to “Freedom Day” on Monday, when Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government says most remaining restrictions on Covid-19 will be lifted.

In the US, any attempt at the federal level to impose the restrictions now envisioned by Mr. Macron is unlikely to win congressional approval. In France, Mr Macron has a majority in the National Assembly, which should ensure that his proposals are voted into law.

Mr Macron is touring the country in an effort to “feel the pulse” of the nation, as he put it. He will go to the side of the Hautes-Pyrénées region in the southwest, where he will get an initial idea on the ground of whether leading the French to vaccinate themselves is a winning move, or put the country on the right track for what is known here as a “health break” or a health fracture that could turn to a bad break once people start turning them away from restaurants.

Placing a health clearance between the French and the meals is not without significant risks.

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