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LATEST: The plan for life in France after lockdown

France strict coronavirus lockdown will start to be lifted from May 11th - but that doesn't mean that life goes back to normal. Here's what we know so far about the loosening of the restrictions.

Published: 19 April 2020 21:18 CEST
Updated: 23 April 2020 16:48 CEST
LATEST: The plan for life in France after lockdown
Photo: AFP

After May 11th the country will move into the next phase – which the French government has dubbed 'living with the virus'.

Health authorities are cautiously optimistic about the current situation, with France recording a slow but steady fall in the number of deaths and of patients in hospital.

READ ALSO Prime Minister: The coronavirus situation is 'under control'

The various ministries are working on their own plans, which will be collated into a full national plan at the end of April and then debated by the French parliament at the start of May.

That will form the basis of the final plan.

But here's what we know so far about the lifting of restrictions;

Work

Businesses will start to reopen from May 11th and more people will be returning to work from that date. There are currently 9 million workers on the chômage partiel (partial unemployment) scheme put in place by the government to avoid mass lay-offs during the lockdown, and many of them will be able to return to work in May.

Anyone who can do their job from home will be asked to continue doing so for the forseeable future.

Bars, restaurants, cafés, museums and tourist sites will reopen at a later date, so anyone employed in the hospitality sector will remain off work.

Employees will be expected to observe social distancing rules at work.

Shops

Businesses that will be open, such as supermarkets, will have to ensure measures are in place enabling people to respect the one-metre safety distance from one another, and they may be expected to provide virus-killing hand sanitising gel to all customers.

Schools

Schools will begin to reopen from May 11th, but the final choice on whether to send children back will lie with parents.

The reopening will be gradual, with some classes going first, and local authorities involved in the decisions.

However Philippe insisted that schools must reopen, saying that for the many children – mostly from poorer backgrounds – who cannot take part in distance learning a longer delay would prove to be a disaster.

For more detail on the school reopening, click here.

Travel

Travel around France is set to be allowed again after May 11th.

After quashing rumours that the lifting of lockdown will be done on a regional level, the Elysées Palace confirmed that it was “working to ensure that there will no problem in travelling between regions” after May 11th.

International travel

Of particular interest to international residents in France, there was no detail on when international travel will be possible.

French people have been told not to book summer holidays for July and August and further decisions on travel both within Europe and further afield are still pending.

READ ALSO When will I be able to travel to France again?

Masks

These will be compulsory on public transport after May 11th, the Elysées confirmed on Thursday.

It has already been announced that masks will be distributed – probably via local authorities – to the general population before May 11th and political and health leaders say they are “encouraged” for all trips outside the home.

Exercise

This still needs to be confirmed by the French parliament, but the Ministry of Sport says it wants jogging, cycling and walking to be able to happen as normal after May 11th. This is currently heavily restricted with cycling for exercise banned altogether and walking or jogging only allowed for one hour a day, within 1km of the home.

The sports ministry has also laid out a timetable for the resumption of professional sport and the reopening of gyms. 

For the full details, click here.

Testing

This has been a bit of a sore point in France, with the country accused of not testing enough. Véran said that by May 11th there would be sufficient capacity to test anyone with symptoms, but also outlined an idea for contact testing and – voluntary – tracing of population movements.

This will be debated by the French parliament at the start of May.

Those who test positive for the virus after May 11th must quarrantine themselves, but they will have the choice of being confined with their family, for which strict rules will apply, or being isolated in special hotels said the PM.

The health minister added that France is currently testing 150,000 people a week and has a goal of 500,000 a week by May 11th.

Over 70s and vulnerable groups

These people will be asked to stay in confinement for longer, but Véran added that this is a recommendation, not an order, and relies on the principle of “individual responsibility”.

Visits to the nation's Ehpad nursing homes, which have been banned for more than a month, will be allowed again from Monday, under strict conditions.

Social distancing

This will remain the norm for many months to come with social distancing advised at work and on public transport – which could be a challenge on the Paris Metro.

Hygiene gestures like hand-washing, hand-gel and sneezing into your elbow will continue, as will avoiding handshakes and la bise, the French double cheek greeting kiss.

Weddings/funerals

In answer to a question on when it will be possible to hold gatherings such as wedding and funerals again, Philippe replied that it was again too early to say, but “it doesn't seem reasonable that a marriage of say 200 people gathered in confined place is to be envisaged. For how long I don't know.”

Local elections

France managed to hold the first round of its local election before the lockdown, but had to cancel the second round of voting. A decision will be taken by the end of May on when the second round will be rescheduled for.

The general message of Sunday's press conference is that life as we knew it before the lockdown will not be returning for many months.

It is estimated that only between two and six million people in France have been exposed to the virus, not enough to create any sort of immunity, and there is no vaccine or effective treatment.

Philippe said: “Our lives from May 11th won't be exactly what we knew before the lockdown.

“We will fight this by changing our habits. This will be our next challenge, and we will make it.”

But in the midst of this challenge, France also has to face a recession predicted to be the worst to hit the country since 1945.

READ ALSO ANALYSIS How bad will the post-coronavirus economic shock be in France?

 

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JOHN LICHFIELD

OPINION: France’s economy is far from doomed, but not quite booming either

Depending on who you ask, France's economy is either booming or doomed - John Lichfield takes a look at who is right and where French finances are heading.

Published: 15 May 2024 11:12 CEST
Updated: 18 May 2024 11:17 CEST
OPINION: France's economy is far from doomed, but not quite booming either

France is booming. France is also doomed. Take your pick.

On a much-visited French news site Le Figaro this week, consecutive stories collided head on.

The first story reported that the annual ‘Choose France’ conference will bring a record number of foreign investments to French soil in 2024 (56 projects worth €15 billion). France is the most attractive country in Europe for foreign investment for the fifth year in succession.

The second story – an essay by the political commentator and pollster Jérôme Fourquet – said that the French economic model of the last 40 years, had “reached the end of the road and left the country in a cul-de-sac”.

France no longer “made anything”, the essay said. The economy was being kept alive by state and consumer spending, funded unsustainably by twin deficits of trade and public finance.

Which is true? Both, up to a point.

The Choose France foreign investment conference in Versailles this week will be the most successful since President Emmanuel Macron launched the project six years ago. France opened 200 more factories than it closed last year, returning to a modest trend of “re-industrialisation” interrupted by the Covid and Ukraine crises.

Jérôme Fourquet’s essay was brilliant but also over the top. It ignored some of the positive developments in France of recent years.

It suggested that France “made nothing” but also admitted that the country was a world leader in arms, cosmetics, perfume, luxury goods and wine.

France, Fourquet might have added, is also one of the world’s largest exporters of cereals. It holds a major part of Airbus, the world’s most successful plane-maker. Unlike the UK, it is still a train-maker and a car-maker, although both industries have declined.

All the same, the essay made good points about the “French model” created unconsciously over four decades by governments of Right and Left and only timidly changed by Emmanuel Macron’s Centre in the last seven years.

Fourquet defines the French model as “state-consumerist”, a mixture of excessive public spending and taxation and generous pensions and welfare payments which allow most French people to live reasonably well. Unfortunately, the high taxation is never enough to cover the public spending and the consumers consume more from abroad than the country exports.

The result is twin, expanding deficits in public spending and the balance of payments which cannot be sustained indefinitely.

In 2003, France’s accumulated state debt was the equivalent of 63 percent of annual GDP. It is now 110 percent of GDP. The annual service charge is about to overtake education as the single biggest item in the state budget.

In 2006, France’s trade deficit was €4.3 billion. In 2023, it was €99.6 billion (admittedly inflated by the high cost of oil and gas).

Fourquet says the cost and bureaucratic weight of the French state make creating businesses – and wealth and jobs – more difficult than in other EU countries. This is covered up by more state spending which, in turn, sustains consumer spending which, in turn, boosts the twin deficits. A vicious spiral.

He concedes that Macron has tried to chip away at the state in the last seven years. The President has also splashed the cash on pet projects and has done little to reduce the regulatory burden.

Rather than lighten the entire system, Macron suspends rules and norms when he wants to get stuff done (such as the rebuilding of Notre Dame cathedral). The success of his foreign investment drive is also partly based on “keys in hand” offers of low or no-regulation factory sites which are not always easily accessible to domestic investors.

Some of those criticisms are justified. Macron has not been the revolutionary that he promised to be in 2017. He has been a plodding state reformer, extending with some success the job-friendly policies introduced by President François Hollande. France being France, neither man gets any credit.

There are signs that the economic downturn late last year (and the explosion in the budget deficit) may have been a temporary set-back as Macron insisted. Growth in the first three months of this year exceeded expectations at 0.2 percent of GDP. Jobs are being created again. (More than 1 million extra jobs since pre-Covid days).

High energy costs are crippling business across Europe but they are lower in France than elsewhere. The boom in foreign investment in France has tended to be high in value but low in jobs. The industrious and energetic minister for industry and energy, Roland Lescure, says that is now changing.

One of the projects under discussion at Choose France is a home-grown plan for a €1.6 billion solar panel factory in the Rhône delta which would create 12,000 jobs.

So is it boom or is it doom?

Neither. There has been a gradual, positive shift in the French social-economic model in the last seven to ten years which Jérôme Fourquet plays down or ignores.

Macron promised to do far more but he has had to surmount to two international crises (Covid and Ukraine) and to adjust to two domestic revolts (Yellow Vests and pensions reform). His unpopularity is partly explained by his failure to sell a convincing narrative of reform; it is also explained by France’s obsession with “reform” (in the abstract) but hatred of all “reforms” (in detail).

But what are the alternatives? All the opposition forces, from far-left to far-right, offer policies which would preserve or worsen an unsustainable status quo.

Macron’s final three years are unlikely to achieve much in the way of new reforms. A recovery of the economy might warm attitudes to Macronism (a big ask) and allow his would-be successors in the Centre to block Marine Le Pen in 2027.

Otherwise, Le Pen’s zombie economics – extra spending, no new taxes, breaking the European single market – could tip a heavily indebted France into the abyss.

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