Ski resorts: Wauquiez and other elected officials demand from Macron the opening of ski lifts

"Mr. President of the Republic, do not kill the French mountain!", Write in a column the president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region Laurent Wauquiez and other elected officials or professionals who ask Emmanuel Macron to reopen in December of the lifts.

Prime Minister Jean Castex announced on Thursday that mountain resorts would be open but not ski lifts.

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"A decision without coherence or common sense"

Although recording a drop in the incidence of the coronavirus, Haute-Savoie and Savoie remain the two departments most affected by the epidemic.

In early February, the Haut-Savoyarde resort of Contamines-Montjoie recorded one of the first clusters of the epidemic in a British family who had stayed in a chalet.

"The sentence fell from above, like all the management of the crisis, with a decision without coherence or common sense. How to explain that we can go to a cinema in Paris but not in a Ski resort in the open air? How to understand that your ministers, a few days ago, encouraged to hire seasonal workers and to take vacations in the mountains? ", get carried away elected officials.

They regret that countries like Austria or Switzerland have decided to open their tracks when they cannot, causing "anger and consternation".

"Are you talking about Europe? But it is not for (German Chancellor Angela) Merkel to decide the future of our stations," they say, referring to Berlin's position in favor of a general ban ski in the EU.

These elected officials consider that the executive's decision is "a sentence against tens of thousands of jobs and businesses", endangering "250 stations, 120,000 jobs and 9 billion euros in revenue for our country" .

Open "for December"

For them, "we must open the stations with the ski lifts for December".

They then demand "a precise timetable" and "urgently a summit of the mountain" around Jean Castex in order to obtain "a real compensation plan commensurate with the economic shock".

This platform is signed, in addition to Laurent Wauquiez, by Hervé Gaymard, president of the department of Savoie Jean-Pierre Barbier, president of the department of Isère Christian Monteil, president of the department of Haute-Savoie Jean-Luc Boch, president of the 'National Association of Mayors of Mountain Resorts (ANMSM) Alexandre Maulin, President of Domaines skiables de France (DSF) or Eric Breche, President of the National Union of French Ski Instructors (SNMSF).