Macron raises Covid rhetoric for election campaign

Emmanuel Macron is facing growing political divisions over Covid rules in the run-up to the spring presidential election. Last Sunday parliament gave its final approval to the government’s latest measures to tackle Covid-19, including a vaccine pass contested by anti-vaccine protesters. The new law, which had a rough ride through parliament, will require people to have a certificate of vaccination to enter public places such as restaurants, cafes, cinemas and long-distance trains. It was passed in the lower house where 215 MPs voted in favour with 58 opposed but against a background of teachers taking strike action and amid street protests and a rise in violent threats against politicians.

With an increasing mood of fatigue among voters after two years of the pandemic and mistrust of the political class, the president wants to be seen as reliable but firm.

Hit by a fifth wave of Covid infections, with cases reported above 300,000 on several recent days, Macron has ramped up his rhetoric against the minority of non-vaccinated people – less than 10% of the population – in part as a way of setting the battle lines for April’s election.

Coronavirus rules are becoming a significant issue for the campaign. Macron’s recent, deliberately radical statement that he really wanted to dump non-vaccinated people “in the shit” by making their daily lives as difficult as possible was aimed to appeal to his own centrist electorate, which is overwhelmingly vaccinated and exasperated at the continuing pandemic. Although France had a slow start on vaccines, it now has one of the highest rates of vaccination in Europe – at more than 90% of the eligible population – and most people support the vaccine pass.

The president is seeking to portray himself as the centrist voice of reason against what he deems the dangers of populism among other candidates: Marine Le Pen and the former TV pundit Éric Zemmour on the far right, and the left’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon. None of them oppose vaccination, but they have been critical of the vaccine pass.

Macron’s main challenger, Valérie Pécresse of Nicolas Sarkozy’s rightwing party, Les Républicains, supports the vaccine pass but her party’s challenges in parliament and the senate helped stall it. Macron’s party blamed Les Républicains for delaying Covid protections. But Damien Abad, the head of the party in the parliament’s lower house and an adviser to Pécresse, described Macron’s comments about dumping people “in the shit” as “cold and calculating populism”.

There is a mood of mistrust of the political class and institutions in France, which has simmered since the gilets jaunes protests.

Elected politicians, particularly from Macron’s party, have made more than 300 complaints to police of death threats since the introduction of the health pass in July 2021, which required either vaccination, recovery from Covid or a negative test to access certain

90%

Proportion of French population eligible for vaccination who are fully vaccinated – one of the highest rates in Europe

public places. There have been more than 60 complaints of violence against elected officials so far this month.

Yaël Braun-Pivet, a lawmaker from Macron’s party, had a message saying if she didn’t vote against the pass there would be a “gigantic bloodbath” in parliament. Pascal Bois, another lawmaker from Macron’s party, who had already received a bullet in the post, had his garage and car torched.

Of the roughly 5 million unvaccinated in France, not all are antivaccine. Some have fears over sideeffects and four out of 10 may have difficulties accessing free vaccines. Nevertheless, divisions in society are becoming clear. Jérôme Fourquet of the pollsters Ifop said 51% of French people felt in danger when in contact with a non-vaccinated person.

More than 100,000 people protested against the vaccine pass last in a demonstration earlier this month.

“Non-vaccinated people are being held responsible for the latest Covid wave, but it’s lack of government hospital-funding that created the problems,” said a 27-year-old woman from Paris who has not been vaccinated because she fears side-effects. She said she might vote far right.

Polls show Macron is the favourite to top the first round of the presidential election and could beat a far-right candidate in the final contest, but would face a challenge from Pécresse if she makes the second round.