Paris (AFP)

The president of Medef Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux on Wednesday called on the government to leave "flexibility" to companies to organize the wearing of compulsory masks in the workplace, considering that the government's announcement had been "a little brutal".

The new health protocol in companies in this fall and which must be announced this week, will have to leave "a little flexibility to companies", he said at the opening of the Medef Summer University, baptized this year "Renaissance of the companies of France", at the Longchamp racecourse in the west of Paris.

He agreed, however, that "anything is better than reconfinement" from the point of view of reviving the economy and reviving business activity.

Arrived on stage to the sound of the hit "I will survive" by Gloria Gaynor, the boss of Medef said he wanted to send a message of "optimism" in this comeback marked by a resurgence of contamination on the front of the Covid epidemic. 19.

Maintaining this annual event means "sending a message to our employees and our fellow citizens: yes the Covid-19 is there, but we can, but we must meet, we must continue to consume, to produce, in short to live ", he estimated.

In front of Prime Minister Jean Castex, who was speaking after him, he called on the government to continue supporting businesses and employees.

Indicating that there were still “2 million employees” on partial unemployment, he notably judged that “it will be necessary to be financially benevolent for them” in the months to come.

In front of an audience of business leaders reduced due to epidemic, the boss of Medef also reiterated his call to reopen the debate on working time, after having already aroused an uproar by evoking this subject during confinement.

"I think we will have to reopen the debate" when the negotiations on pension reform resume, that is to say "not now", but "not in 2022 either," he said.

"The wealth of a country is the amount of work per individual multiplied by the number of people who work. Everything else is ideology," he said, estimating that the countries of the north of Europe "will hold us to account for the reforms".

© 2020 AFP