After the National Assembly on Tuesday, the Senate approved by a show of hands the bill governing the gradual exit from the state of health emergency, which notably allows the establishment of a controversial "health pass".
The text provides for the state of health emergency to end on September 30.
The Parliament adopted definitively Thursday evening, by a final vote of the Senate, the bill governing the gradual exit from the state of health emergency, which notably allows the establishment of a controversial "health pass". After the National Assembly on Tuesday, the upper house dominated by the right-wing opposition approved by a show of hands the text which had been the subject of an agreement between the two chambers in a joint committee. The Communist-majority PS and CRCE groups voted against and environmentalists abstained.
The deputies of the left (GDR, LFI, SOC) decided to seize the Constitutional Council, judging that it "gives very important powers to the government on bases much too vague and imprecise".
The leader of the senators of the CRCE group, Eliane Assassi, said "to bring a lot of hope" in this appeal.
The state of health emergency will end on September 30
The Secretary of State for Pensions and Occupational Health, Laurent Pietraszewski, for his part welcomed in the hemicycle of the Luxembourg Palace "a fair balance between our freedoms and the protection of public health".
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The transitional regime that it provides provides a legal framework for the deconfinement measures announced by the executive, without lowering our guard against the hypothesis of an epidemic resumption.
The state of health emergency will end on September 30, and not at the end of October as the executive had wished.
The "sanitary pass" will be limited to large gatherings
On the sensitive aspect of the health pass, deputies and senators validated the contributions voted by the two chambers. Introduced by the government by amendment to the National Assembly, the "sanitary pass" will be limited to large gatherings, such as festivals, and subject to a series of measures limiting attacks on individual freedoms. It will also be "temporary, the time of a summer", noted rapporteur of the text in the Senate Philippe Bas.
The senators also obtained that it could be implemented only in places which do not make it possible to ensure compliance with barrier gestures. Only authorized persons may carry out checks. The "health pass" will subordinate access to major events, more than 1,000 people according to the government's promise, to the presentation of a negative result of screening for the virus, a proof of vaccination, or a certificate of recovery from contamination.