M.he French President Emmanuel Macron rekindled the debate about how to deal with the unvaccinated. Despite the high vaccination rate, the Omikron wave is rolling over France, with almost 300,000 new cases recently reported. Health Minister Olivier Véran confessed that these numbers make him dizzy. In a conversation with readers of the newspaper “Le Parisien” on Wednesday, the President said: “I really want to piss off the unvaccinated.”
He used the verb “emmerder”, the origin of which is described in the dictionary of the Académie Française as “to cover with excrement”. According to the verdict of the language guardians, the expression is “vulgar” and can sound contemptuous. As the Elysée Palace explained later, Macron is said to have referred to a famous saying by the former President Georges Pompidou, who in 1966 approached his advisor Jacques Chirac when he presented laws to be signed: “Please stop pissing the French off to go! “.
No more wine for the unvaccinated
Macron explains in an interview that he will “not put the unvaccinated in prison and not have them forcibly vaccinated”. But he wanted to “deny them access to social life as much as possible” and “torment them to the end”. That is the strategy. “From January 15, they can no longer go to restaurants, have a glass (wine), drink a café, or go to the theater or the cinema,” said Macron. He went even harder with those who opposed the vaccination. “You are undermining the very foundations of the nation. When my freedom threatens that of others, I become irresponsible. An irresponsible person is no longer a citizen, ”said Macron.
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The blunt attack on unvaccinated people and those who oppose vaccination should also be understood as a reaction to the government’s unexpected difficulties in getting the law on the new vaccination pass through the National Assembly. From January 15th, unvaccinated people should no longer be able to “test themselves” with a negative test result. Only those who have been vaccinated should have access to long-distance travel by train, bus and plane, to restaurants, cafés, cinemas or the concert hall.
The government had expected that the vote would only be a formality. But the schedule is out of joint because the government faction of La République en marche was too poorly staffed at the crucial night session on Tuesday night. The President of the National Assembly, Richard Ferrand, had tested positive after the first symptoms. He is considered to be the pacemaker of the often undisciplined parliamentary group and was therefore missing. With a raised hand, the MPs from the opposition parties present outvoted the governing parliamentary group and refused to continue the debate.