The government plans to end the state of public health emergency. Monday, may 22, the Senate, dominated by the right-wing opposition has adopted the draft of the law organizing the output of the state of health emergency after the 10 July. The institution has also decided to reduce the scope of restrictions that will be able to take the government until the fall.
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The bill was voted in first reading by show of hands, with the support of the elected LR, the left opposing a text in "trompe l'oeil" that belongs to " extend the state of emergency ". Deputies and senators will try to agree on a common text, Thursday, in mixed joint commission, failing which a new reading must be organised in the two chambers, the Assembly having the last word. The senators 'leader LR, Bruno Retailleau has warned that the Senate had found" a path is very narrow not to reject the text, "and had happened" at the limit "of its" opportunities for flexibility ". Entered into force on 24 march to address the epidemic of Covid-19, the state of a health emergency, which allows you to restrict certain public freedoms, had been extended in may until the 10th of July.
The state health emergency extended in French Guiana and Mayotte
The government intends to put an end to it, with the exception of Guyana and Mayotte, where it will be extended " until October 30, inclusive ", because the virus is still circulating actively. "The situation is deteriorating dramatically" in Guyana, has also warned Antoine Karam (app. LREM), a senator of the community in which the minister of overseas Annick Girardin, is expected on Tuesday. For the rest of the country, the text allows for the same period of restrictions on the movement of people, the reception of the public in certain institutions or gatherings.
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The senators have amended the text to allow the government to " regulate ", while excluding the possibility of a ban. "There is a limit to what can be done in terms of restriction of public freedoms ", said the president of the Law commission Philippe Bas (LR), which has defended provisions that are "proportionate" to the situation and argued that the government could still trigger to the status of a health emergency. The minister of Health Olivier Veran has tried without success to restore the text voted by the national Assembly.
"social Emergency"
" The return to the common law, it is the end of the exception (...) this is not the end of vigilance ", has he hammered, stressing that "many measures retain their relevance in the months to come," while the risks of a restart of the epidemic of sars coronavirus " do exist ". A warning that has resonated with acuity, the day after the observation of a certain laxity in the gestures of the barrier, on Sunday at the music Festival. In respect of the requirement of tests for the persons arriving by aircraft between the territories ultramarins and the hexagon, the senators were limited to persons " who have resided in during the previous month in a circulation area of the infection ".
in addition, They have modified the article of the code of public health which was the basis of the first restrictive measures at the beginning of the epidemic in order to " clarify and secure ". Thus, they have limited the possibilities of intervention by the minister of Health to measures relating to the organisation of the health system and investment in quarantine and isolation. The senators have finally adopted without changes to the section extending from the retention of certain data collected by health information systems. The deputies have limited this possibility to the sole purpose of epidemiological surveillance and research, without identification of individuals.
The text was "improved"
The leader of senators PS Patrick Kanner found that the text had been "improved" during its passage in the Senate, but that his group could not accept, however, once again, that the gravity of the situation to be an excuse to bring little by little a state of exception in the common law ". "The time is the state of social emergency, rather than the continuation of a state of emergency coercive ", launched the president of the group CRCE-majority communist Eliane Assassi.
