Paris – The party is a thing of the past – politics

At L’Office on the Boulevard de Charonne in northeast Paris, the waiters at the counter turned on a small radio. It is shortly before noon and they await the government’s new crown ordinances as a verdict. Do they have to close or can they stay open? “We have to live with the virus and protect ourselves from it,” the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, said on the radio. Translated into measures, this means: As of Tuesday, all bars in the city will close, restaurants can remain open. At L’Office they still don’t know which category they will fall into. Outside in the awning there is a bar, but they also have a kitchen. But even if they can still receive guests, they will have to get used to the new rules.

That means: allowing only six people per table, keeping a distance of one meter between tables, writing down the names and phone numbers of the guests so that the chains of contagion can be traced. With these new rules, a time is ending in which at first it seemed as if the coronavirus had disappeared from the city and in which an intermediate phase began, in which everyone wore a mask on the sidewalks but occupied chairs on the terraces of bars and restaurants. The chair stopped as usual.

Improvised afternoons between pallets

After the strict twelve-week curfew ended in the spring, Paris had been in a state of lively anarchy for a few weeks. Restaurants were allowed to use the parking spaces as additional terraces, there were impromptu evenings between wooden pallets instead of the usual elegance. The number of infections, which has been increasing for weeks, has put an end to these improvisational exercises. “Is the party over?” the BFM information transmitter faded white-on-red after the latest measures to contain the pandemic were announced.

The numbers have long heralded the end of the party. Since Sunday night, Paris and Marseille have switched to “the highest alert.” But also in the rest of France, beyond these two largest cities in the country, the virus has spread rapidly again since late summer. On Sunday night, the Health Ministry announced that more than 12,000 new corona cases had been registered in 24 hours. 8.2 percent of corona tests are positive. There are 1,340 clusters of infections across the country, 265 of which are in nursing homes and nursing homes. In one week, 4,264 people were admitted to hospitals with Covid-19 disease and 893 were admitted to intensive care units.

It is not always easy to decipher how seriously the government takes the figures and how it intends to react to them. President Emmanuel Macron has significantly changed his communication strategy compared to spring. While in March he was still operating with martial rhetoric and saying that France was “at war” against the virus, he now relies on the slogans of perseverance that they are supposed to encourage. “We will get through this together. Have confidence,” he tweeted earlier this month. Macron avoids alarming words or calls.

This creates the impression of a wobbly course over and over again: strict measures are in place, such as the requirement for a mask on the street and in offices, but pre-Crown traditions such as the Tour de France are respected. The way the government treated those responsible in cities and regions also seemed contradictory. At the end of September there was an open conflict between the government and the mayors of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, and Marseille, Michèle Rubirola. The government had decreed that bars in Paris were to close at 10 pm and restaurants and bars in Marseille were to close completely. Both Hidalgo and Rubirola complained that these decisions had not been agreed with them beforehand.

The new Prime Minister Jean Castex, in office since late June, had promised to give the regions greater responsibility in fighting the pandemic. The Marseille city council was only informed of the requested closure of the bars half an hour before the new restriction was announced.

On Monday, the mayor of Paris, Hidalgo, explicitly thanked the prime minister for the “partnership-based cooperation,” but in Marseille she has yet to make peace with decision-makers in Paris. “I am pleased that Marseille restaurants can reopen from today. But it is unfortunate that this decision was made so as not to have to close restaurants elsewhere,” Green Mayor Rubirola tweeted on Monday. Because the government has classified Marseille and Paris as the highest risk areas, the same rules now apply in both cities. Since restaurants in Paris do not have to close, they can now reopen in Marseille.

The new measures also include the restriction of face-to-face events at universities. 40 percent of the infection groups affect schools and universities. Therefore, only half of the seats in conference rooms should be occupied. No new editions have been made for cinemas and theaters, they may remain open. The pools, on the other hand, can only be visited by school classes or sports clubs and will be closed to the public.