Authoritarian Macron boosts vaccine uptake as he eyes a second term

A pocket cartoon in Le Parisien sums it up best. A husband, looking slightly dazed, turns to his wife at the finish of Emmanuel Macron’s latest presidential address.

“What was it he said?” he asks her. 

“He said that if we want to protest against pension reform, we have to have a vaccine passport.” 

Which is about the size of it. 

In his televised broadcast from the Élysée, Macron said that from 1 August anyone planning to eat out, visit a bar or café, or travel any distance by train, plane or car must show proof that they have been vaccinated or that, on the day in question, they have taken a Covid test deemed negative. 

A so-called pass sanitaire will also be required to go to the cinema or theatre, attend a festival or visit a shopping centre. All necessary security will be stepped up to ensure that citizens adhere to the new regulations. 

In the meantime, the rate of vaccinations is to be increased, with special attention given to schoolchildren and students as well as the elderly and their carers. Lastly, come September, a decision will be announced on the possibility of a third, booster injection to keep Covid variants at bay over the winter. 

The President will himself have been boosted this morning by news that a surge in vaccination applications is underway. More than a million requests were received on Monday morning, with millions more to be expected during the course of the next few days. Macron’s fireside chat may thus be seen as a breakthrough moment. Although uptake has been increasing steadily in recent weeks, millions of French remained sceptical about the jab. They don’t like needles. The fact is that if the vaccine had come in the form of a suppository, it would almost certainly have gone down better. 

Up to last weekend, a total of 35.5 million adults had received at least one dose of vaccine – mainly Pfizer, but also AstraZeneca – of whom 26.8 million were double-jabbed. At the same time, the number of cases detected has been rising at an average of 1,260 per day. 

In total, between the beginning of March 2020 and 11 July this year, 111,353 people died of Covid in France, 84,880 in hospital and 26,473 in care homes. This week, some 7,200 people are in hospital with the disease, just under 1,000 of whom are in critical care. 

After a notoriously slow start, France has been catching up fast. The main concern now is that the Delta variant, and other variants as yet undiagnosed, will increase the rate of infection and the number of deaths during what is traditionally the flu season, from November through to the Spring of next year. 

Macron is not taking an obvious gamble. Rather, he is playing it straight. His strategy is determined by what he is advised is likely to be the next stage in the progress of the disease. The latest regulations, though typically French in character, are largely in accord with those being rolled out elsewhere in Europe and even, to a considerable extent, in the UK, where the official response looks increasingly cautious. 

“Our country is facing a surge in the epidemic across our territory, in mainland France as well as our overseas territories,” he began his address, adopting the tone of an old-style family doctor. “The situation is under control, but if we do not act now the number of cases will increase significantly and will lead to a rise in hospitalisations.” 

And for once, it seems, the French were nodding in agreement. 

For the Opposition parties, looking greedily ahead to next spring’s presidential elections, criticising the latest tranche of restrictions is something of a zero-sum game. They are happy to dwell on the mistakes Macron made in the early months of the pandemic, but they are stumped when it comes to revealing what they would do differently today. If the President can make good on his word and, as far as possible, minimise the impact of Covid over the winter months, he may yet come out ahead in the polls. 

The Left couldn’t make up its mind what to say and merely carped from the sidelines. It was much more interested in the government’s widely anticipated announcement that it would be suspending its proposed reform of the pension system until the restoration of normal politics – i.e. until Macron is either defeated or wins a second term. Anne Hidalgo, the Socialist mayor of Paris and likely presidential contender, spent the day with senior party colleagues from across the country hoping to build on their success in last month’s regional elections. 

On the far right, Marine Le Pen denounced the new batch of measures as an attack on individual liberties. Carers who chose to remain unvaccinated were being threatened with loss of their livelihoods, she said. “What ingratitude!” Similar murmurings could be heard from the centre-right, several of whose presidential hopefuls warned of a two-tier society comprising the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. But the general feeling was that the President had, as Le Parisien put it, “asphyxiated” his rivals. 

People are asking themselves how Le Pen – very much an agitator, not an administrator – would have fared if Covid had turned up on her watch. They are also wondering which of the several centre-right candidates for the Élysée, led by Xavier Bertrand, would have adopted a course of action significantly different from that of Macron. 

There is public disquiet, of course. That was to be expected. The French, like the English, were looking forward to their Freedom Day – 19 July – and the frustration felt is palpable. The solution, however, is in their own hands: get vaccinated and get issued with the necessary paperwork. It’s not as if France has any problem with identity cards. “Vos papiers, s’il vous plait” is one of most historically common phrases in the language. Those who refuse to comply will find themselves barred from a whole raft of everyday activities. From 15 September, they will also face as-yet unspecified legal sanctions. 

As a source close to the President put it after the broadcast, “he is betting on good citizenship and wants to place the onus on those who have not yet been vaccinated”.