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As the pale winter sun sets over the Champagne region of France, the countdown begins.
Workers stop pruning the vines when the light fades around 4:30 p.m., leaving them 90 minutes to come back from the cold, change into work clothes, get in their cars, and go home before curfew. for coronavirus at 6 pm
Forget socializing with friends after work, after-school clubs for kids, or evening shopping beyond quick trips for the essentials. The police on patrol demand valid reasons from the people they see around. For those who don’t have them, the threat of mounting fines for curfew breakers makes life outside of weekends more and more a job and not a game.
“At 6 in the afternoon, life stops,” says Champagne producer Alexandre Prat.
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Trying to avoid the need for a third nationwide shutdown that would further affect Europe’s second-largest economy and put more jobs at risk, France is opting for progressive curfews. Large portions of eastern France, including most of its regions bordering Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Italy, face movement restrictions from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.
The rest of France could quickly follow suit, losing an extra two hours of freedom that has been enough for residents to maintain a basic social life.
Until a couple of weeks ago, the night curfew did not come into effect until 8 pm in the Prat region, the Marne. Customers still stopped by to buy bottles of his family’s sparkling wines on the way home, he said. But when the cutoff time was brought forward to 6 p.m. to curb viral infections, the drinkers disappeared.
“Now we have no one,” said Prat.
Jean-Francois Badias / AP
Trying to avoid the need for a third nationwide shutdown that would further affect Europe’s second-largest economy and put more jobs at risk, France is opting for progressive curfews.
The town where only retiree Jerome Brunault lives in the Burgundy wine country is also in one of the 6pm curfew zones. The 67-year-old says his loneliness weighs more heavily without the chance to have a late night drink, snacks and chat with friends, the so-called “apero” gatherings so beloved by the French that they were still feasible when curfew began. two. hours later.
“With the 6pm curfew, we can no longer go see our friends for a drink,” Brunault said. “Now I spend my days not talking to anyone except the baker and some people on the phone.”
The imposition of a 6pm curfew across the country is one of the options the French government is considering in response to rising infections and the spread of a particularly contagious variant of the virus that has spread across the UK. , where new infections and deaths from viruses have skyrocketed.
French Prime Minister Jean Castex could announce an extension of the curfew on Thursday night, as well as other restrictions, to combat the virus in a country that has seen more than 69,000 confirmed deaths from viruses.
Daniel Cole / AP
A fisherman staggers on his line before curfew is enforced in Marseille, southern France.
An earlier curfew combats the transmission of the virus “precisely because it serves to limit the social interactions that people can have at the end of the day, for example, in private homes,” says French government spokesman Gabriel Attal.
Nighttime curfews have become the norm on swaths of Europe, but the 6pm to 6am curfew in 25 regions of eastern France is the most restrictive anywhere of the 27 nations of the European Union. Curfews in other countries start later and often end earlier.
The curfew in Italy runs from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., as does the curfew from Friday night to Sunday morning in Latvia. The French-speaking regions of Belgium have a curfew from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., while in the Dutch-speaking region of Belgium, the hours are from midnight to 5 a.m.
People leaving between 8:00 p.m. M. And 5:00 a. M. In Hungary they must be able to show the police written proof from their employers that they are working or commuting.
There are no curfews in Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Lithuania, Malta, Sweden, Poland or the Netherlands, although the Dutch government is considering whether imposing a curfew would curb new cases of Covid- 19.
In France, critics of the 6:00 p.m. curfew M. They say the earlier hour actually squeezes people the most after work, when they huddle on public transportation, clog the roads, and shop for groceries in a narrow rush hour window before they get home.
Women’s rugby coach Felicie Guinot says negotiating rush hour traffic in Marseille has turned into a nightmare. The southern French city is among the places where the most contagious variant of the virus has begun to break out.
“It’s a fight so everyone can be home at 6 pm,” Guinot said.
In historic Besançon, the fortified city that was the hometown of The Miserables”Author Victor Hugo, owner of the Jean-Charles Valley music store, says the 6 p.m. deadline means people no longer stop by after work to play the guitars and other instruments it sells. Instead, they rush home.
“People are completely demoralized,” Valley said.
In Dijon, the French city known for its spicy mustard, Celine Bourdin, a working mother of two, says her life has been reduced to “dropping the kids off at school and going to work, then coming home, helping the kids. kids with homework and making dinner. “
But even that cycle is better than a repeat of France’s blockade at the start of the pandemic, when schools were closed too, Bourdin says.
“If my kids don’t go to school, it means I can’t work anymore,” he said. “It was terribly difficult to be trapped in the house almost 24 hours a day.”
