“It’s a sham consultation”, denounces the deputy La France insoumise (LFI) of Seine-Saint-Denis Éric Coquerel on Tuesday, December 21 on franceinfo, while the Prime Minister invited the parliamentary groups to participate in a videoconference to talk about the proposals for new health measures by the government , in particular the transformation of the health pass into a vaccination pass.
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franceinfo: Does the government consult parliamentarians more today than at the start of the health crisis?
Eric Coquerel: No, since the start of the pandemic, consultations have been held, but in reality – and this is one of the reasons why we have stopped going – these are not consultations, they are information for parliamentarians. We had the bad surprise, the first times, to find ourselves then with a communication from the government which suggested that it had reached an agreement with the groups, the parliamentarians and that these proposals concerned them. So this kind of information, which is not a real consultation with the government, is useless. It is a sham consultation. The consultation of Parliament will actually be in January, in the hemicycle, where the government will present a bill.
What do you want to say to the Prime Minister?
What we have been saying for some time. We were against the extension of the health pass for two reasons, on the one hand because it poses a problem for the society of control and limitation of freedoms that this implies, a problem of discrimination. And in addition to that, it is often a false security, moreover unfortunately it has been confirmed because people have the impression that they are not going to transmit the disease, we forget the barrier gestures, we forget to put on the masks and we end up with something that is not necessarily very positive. And there, it will be worse because in reality it is a disguised vaccination obligation, which is being set up and I believe that it is not the best solution to fight against the epidemic, than to to discriminate, to target the French, to point the finger at those who do not want to be vaccinated, instead of trying rather by pedagogy to convince them.
“Considering the very high level of vaccinated people, I do not agree with this speech of the government which suggests that it is because of the unvaccinated that today we are there.”
Éric Coquerel, La France insoumise (LFI) of Seine-Saint-Denisto franceinfo
But don’t you find that the government has already done a lot to encourage the French to be vaccinated without forcing them to do so?
We have a vaccination rate that goes, depending on the age group, from 75 to 96%. I remind you that at the beginning of the illness, we were told that it was equivalent to collective immunity. The number of people vaccinated in France, in theory, if the vaccine was the only solution, should prevent the virus from coming back. However, he now comes back on a regular basis. I am for convincing people to get vaccinated, if only because it prevents most of the most serious cases of this disease. But besides that, we have to put in place other measures, which the government is not doing and in particular to put the package on the hospital which finds itself – as with each variant since the beginning of this crisis – submerged for lack of additional beds, for lack of additional resources, such as the government had provided.