Illustration in a pub on the Croix-Rousse plateau.

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Elisa Frisullo / 20 Minutes

  • In Lyon, the bars will have to close at 10 p.m. at the latest, as Olivier Véran announced last week.

  • An announcement made "without consultation", deplored by the mayor of Lyon Grégory Doucet who fears that this measure will only move the public "from private space to public space".

It is not only in Marseille that the announcements of the Minister of Health Olivier Véran astonished, see annoyed, the local authorities.

Mayor EELV of Lyon Grégory Doucet regretted on Monday the announcement "without consultation" by the government of the closure of bars in his city from 10 p.m. to fight against the spread of Covid-19, saying he was surprised by a "brutal change method ”.

"The new measures announced Wednesday by the minister came up against the previous ones announced (two days earlier, note) by the prefect, which had been discussed and concerted," regretted Grégory Doucet to the press.

On September 23, the Minister of Health Olivier Véran announced that Lyon had been placed, like ten other cities such as Paris, Nice, or Lille, in a heightened alert zone, as part of new restrictive measures in the face of the upsurge of Covid-19 cases.

The mayor "dubious" about the effectiveness of this measure

This classification generates a battery of health measures including the closing of bars at 10 p.m. maximum from September 28.

"I am surprised by this sudden change of method whereas a few days before, Prime Minister Jean Castex had called me to congratulate us on the good collaboration with the prefecture", underlined the new mayor of Lyon, before his municipal council of back to school.


For lack of consultation, "I think the latest announcements create division, and in this moment of rebound of the epidemic that does not seem to me to be the right strategy", he insisted.

In addition, the councilor says he is "skeptical" about this measure concerning drinking places, which, according to him, "risks moving the population from private space to public space."

“At 10 pm, if you are with friends in a bar and the bar tells you that it is closing, you go out and continue your convivial moment outside.

And there the masks are not necessarily put ", he estimated, stressing that, if" we see a progression of the mask during the day, in the evening in the places of festive gatherings the percentage of wearing of mask collapses ".

“We would have much more to gain from empowering entrepreneurs and bar owners rather than asking them to close,” added Grégory Doucet.

In addition, the elected EELV indicated that he did not wish to give up as of now the Festival of Lights, scheduled for early December, giving himself "until mid-November for a final decision".

A “suitable” party will be held if the authorized tonnage is 5,000 people or more, he added.

Traditionally, this event brings together hundreds of thousands of people in the city center.

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  • Economy

  • Lyon

  • Covid 19

  • Gregory Doucet

  • Bar

  • epidemic

  • Society