France: in which closed public places will it be mandatory to wear a mask?

Where exactly will you have to wear a mask from next Monday? And will it be mandatory in the workplace? This is the question that many French people have been asking since Jean Castex announced on Thursday July 16 that the obligation to wear a mask in enclosed public places would come into force on July 20.

It remains to be seen what the expression "closed public places" used by the Head of State on July 14 and since taken over by the Prime Minister covers, which is not a legal term. Will this obligation apply only to "establishments open to the public" (ERP) or will it also apply to workplaces?

>> To read: The compulsory mask in closed public places in France from "next week"

According to the French administration, LES "are buildings in which outside persons are admitted", "it does not matter whether access is paid or free, free, restricted or by invitation". On the other hand, "a company not open to the public, but only to staff, is not an ERP".

"There will be a fairly rapid work of definition" on the part of the government to know what public places we are talking about, how the obligation applies ", assured, Tuesday July 14, Gabriel Attal, the spokesman of government, on BFM TV.

Gabriel Attal: "this is not to say that we must wait until August 1 to wear a mask in closed public places" pic.twitter.com/lpp7y9PJM5

According to the law leaving the State of health emergency of July 9, "the Prime Minister may, by decree made on the report of the Minister of Health, (...) regulate (...) the conditions of 'access (...) to one or more categories of establishments open to the public as well as meeting places, with the exception of premises for residential use ".

Wearing the mask already compulsory in Saint-Ouen and Laval

In Saint-Ouen, in Seine-Saint-Denis, where this measure has been in force since Monday July 13, the measure concerns "any closed establishment receiving the public, whether its activity is administrative or commercial" (shops, town hall, public services, common areas of hotels, etc.), said the prefecture in a press release.

The prefect of Mayenne also signed, Wednesday, July 15, an order with immediate effect making it mandatory to wear a mask in the LES of Laval and five other municipalities in its periphery. But in Saint-Ouen as in Laval, the orders do not mention companies that do not receive an audience.

However, for the doctors who signed a forum calling for making the wearing of the mask compulsory, posted online on July 12 by Liberation, it is "essential" that the obligation to wear the mask also apply "on the premises of job".

>> To read: With or without a mask in closed public places: the executive headache

"The virus does not in fact know the subtlety of the administrative definitions of enclosed spaces, it is the same everywhere", they say, in a reaction transmitted to AFP, stressing that, according to Public Health France, "professional premises represent 25% of the clusters under investigation and almost 20% of recent clusters ".

Will the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, be sensitive to this argument? This seems to indicate one of his statements Thursday at the National Assembly. "I encourage and invite all French people, without delay, without waiting for the publication of a decree and without the obligation being set in stone, to wear a mask in all enclosed places whatever be, and when they are grouped even more, "insisted the minister, adding that the text should be ready" by Monday or Tuesday ".

With AFP

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