France: the future vaccination certificate centers the electoral battle for the Elysee

The bill to impose on France A vaccination certificate for many social activities, which begins its processing in the Senate next week, has become a monopoly of the April presidential election campaign with the tirade of Emmanuel Macron against the unvaccinated.

Macron’s controversial words on Tuesday, which are understood in an electoral code, ignited the debate that had begun a day earlier in the National Assembly on a bill that was adopted in first reading on Thursday with the votes of 214 deputies in favor, 93 against and 27 abstentions.

The head of state unleashed a political storm by warning, in a very colloquial and direct tone during an interview with readers of the newspaper Le Parisien, that his intention was to “annoy” or “screw” the unvaccinated, which are the possible translations from the verb he used, “emmerder”.

Thus he charged against the refractory of the vaccine because “when my freedom comes to threaten that of others, I become irresponsible. And an irresponsible person is no longer a citizen, ”he said.

Criticism rained down on him almost immediately from the entire political opposition. But Macron, far from backtracking, reaffirmed his argument on Friday when he appeared alongside the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, to explain the French presidency of the EU.

Beyond pointing out that he was aware of having used “colloquial” expressions, he insisted then that the true fracture is being caused by those who “make a slogan of a freedom that becomes irresponsible.”

A controversy that does not harm him in the polls

The controversy does not seem to have damaged the electoral prospects of the president, in view of a first poll carried out a posteriori by the Ipsos demographic institute and published this Saturday, which even reinforces his position as favorite. His voting intentions are up one point from another poll by the same institute in December.

It would receive 25.5-26% of the vote in the first round, well ahead of the three candidates with possibilities to qualify for the second: the leader of the extreme right, Marine Le Pen (17%), the pretender of the conservative party Los Republicans, Valérie Pécresse (16%), and the right-wing intellectual Éric Zemmour (12%).

In a possible second round, his victory would be clear both against Pécresse (55% -45%) and against Le Pen (58% -42%).

According to Ipsos CEO Brice Tenturier, Macron’s declaration of war against the unvaccinated “solidifies his constituency.”

The dialectical maneuver, on the one hand, was intended to expose the divisions among the Republicans, since a part of their deputies spoke out for blocking the debate on the bill, when Pécresse had been in favor of the essential content of its content.

In addition, it also sought to marginalize the far-right candidates in their defense of the anti-vaccines, which are actually a very minority group (more than 90% of the adult population in France is vaccinated).

Demonstrations against the vaccination certificate

A part of those groups are on the streets today. As every Saturday since last July, marches and rallies have been called in dozens of French cities to protest against the imposition of the health certificate for current activities of social life and now in particular against the future obligation of the vaccination certificate that will replace it. .

While awaiting the official figures, the forces of order anticipated that some 40,000 people would take to the streets, summoned by disparate organizations, among which there are far-right movements such as Los Patriotas but also groups of “yellow vests”.

With regard to the bill, it continues its parliamentary journey in the Senate plenary as of Tuesday, with little chance that it will be definitively approved on the 15th as the Macron government initially wanted.

The text that came out of the Assembly establishes the obligation to demonstrate with a new certificate that the vaccination schedule has been completed to drink something in a bar or restaurant, to go to the cinema, a show or a stadium, but also to travel by long-distance public transport (plane, train, bus or boat).

This implies that it will no longer be enough to have a negative test to continue doing all these activities and that those who work in those sectors will have to have that vaccination certificate to continue in activity.