Paris (AFP)

The Senate began Monday examining the bill extending the state of health emergency, firmly decided to "include essential guarantees" for deconfinement, including the monitoring of patients with coronavirus and their contacts, as well as on the responsibility of mayors.

The examination in the Senate hemicycle will continue Tuesday afternoon and possibly in the evening. The text will then go to the National Assembly, for final adoption before the weekend.

"We are mobilized, determined to succeed in deconfinement, but we will not accept to do so without guarantees," warned rapporteur LR Philippe Bas.

The seven articles of the bill aim to "consolidate the legal framework" of the regime derogating from the state of health emergency and to "broaden" it to "integrate into it the challenges of deconfinement", which must begin on May 11, according to the Minister of Health Olivier Véran.

Dominated by the right-wing opposition, the Senate has so far voted without overbearing the government's first emergency texts to deal with the epidemic. Today, the tone has changed, the chamber of territories even posing the threat of a referral to the Constitutional Council if the question of the responsibility of local elected officials in the management of deconfinement was not resolved.

- Extension until July 10 -

The Senate thus gave a very large green light Monday evening to the device proposed by the rapporteur aimed at adjusting the criminal liability regime for employers, local elected officials and civil servants who will be called upon to take measures to break the confinement.

A government amendment to remove this device introduced in committee was rejected by 327 votes against and zero for. 13 of the 23 LREM senators abstained, and 10 voted against.

The Senate also validated the date of July 10 retained by the commission for the term of the extension of the state of emergency, while the initial text of the government extended it until July 24.

"Two months from the date of deconfinement, this is an argument that can be heard," said the Minister of Health, adding that "the debate will run its course" in the Assembly.

Against the advice of the government, the Senate adopted an amendment by Maryse Carrère (RDSE with a radical majority) aiming to remove from preventive placement in quarantine on their arrival in France the French of communities and territories overseas.

On the other hand, he rejected, after a long debate, an amendment from the chairman LR of the Social Affairs Committee Alain Milon aimed at allowing placement forced into isolation in the event of repeated refusal of medical recommendations by an infected person or at risk of infection. The question divided the LR senators, Mr. Bas being against it, like the minister.

The controversial article 6 will be discussed in public Tuesday. It provides for the creation of an "information system", intended to identify those infected or likely to be infected, as well as those who have been in contact with them, in order to trace the chains of contamination.

"If the law intervenes, it is only to remove the obstacles relating to medical confidentiality", because of the large number of participants in this "tracing", said the minister.

The senators have already marked in committee the exemption thus granted to medical confidentiality by limiting the duration - that of the state of health emergency -, and the perimeter - only the data concerning the infection by the virus.

They refused to empower the government to legislate by orders on this issue and created a supervisory body. They also provided for the possibility in certain cases of refusing to be registered in the patient follow-up file.

Finally, they explicitly excluded that the text could serve as a legal basis for the deployment of the StopCovid application. The Minister for his part "wished to cut short any suspicion", ensuring that the information systems provided for in the text "are legally and technically independent of + Stop Covid +".

© 2020 AFP