SHARE
COPY LINK

LAW

French insurance giant agrees to pay €300m to restaurants over Covid closures

French insurance giant Axa said on Thursday that it would pay €300 million to some 15,000 restaurants fighting to have at least part of their losses due to Covid lockdowns covered by their policies.

French insurance giant agrees to pay €300m to restaurants over Covid closures
Restaurants had taken the insurer to court over their refusal to pay out. Photo: Ludovic Marin/AFP

The agreement comes as Axa has faced several lawsuits from restaurant owners saying the insurer is trying to back out of its contractual obligations, putting their livelihoods at risk.

Most of the lawsuits so far have been successful.

“I’m sorry about all that has happened, because we were at odds with restaurants over a misunderstanding,” Axa’s chief executive Thomas Buberl told Europe 1 radio, noting that some appeals courts rulings had been in Axa’s favour.

“We’re offering a settlement to lots of people who haven’t asked for anything, even those who have lost in court will be able to be part of it,” he said.

Restaurants were allowed to start serving patrons indoors on Wednesday for the first time since October, as France emerges from a third coronavirus lockdown.

The government has unlocked billions of euros in aid for restaurants and other businesses forced to close in a bid to slow contagion rates.

But industry officials say thousands of eateries are facing huge debt piles and the prospect of crimped revenues in the months to come since capacity levels remain capped for now.

Axa’s clients sought relief via their policies that covered “administrative closures” for a variety of reasons, including health shutdowns.

Axa refused, citing a clause specifying that any shutdown had to apply only to the individual restaurant covered, which excluded closures due to a generalised health emergency.

The company says some 1,500 suits have been filed, the first by the Parisian restaurateur Stephane Manigold, who obtained €70,000 in May 2020 to cover losses at his Michelin two-star Maison Rostang and three other restaurants.

“This response is not compensation, it’s a transaction,” Buberl added.

“We want to accompany our restaurant clients during this reopening period, and it’s important to put this difficulty behind us,” he said.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

HEALTH

France’s Covid-19 app to be ‘put to sleep’

France's Covid-tracker app, used for months for the all-important 'health pass' will be switched off today, health officials have confirmed.

France’s Covid-19 app to be 'put to sleep'

Covid-19 screening in France reaches an important milestone on Friday, June 30th, 2023 – when the TousAntiCovid app is officially ‘put to sleep’.

The app, which was launched in June 2020 as France came out of its first lockdown of the pandemic and has undergone a number of iterations, including as a delivery device for the health pass, will be switched off. 

For most people, this anniversary will pass without mention. Few people have consulted the app in recent months, and it has sat dormant on many smartphones since France’s Covid-19 health pass requirement was suspended in March 2022.

Meanwhile, the Système d’Informations de DEPistage (SI-DEP) interface – which has been informing people about their test results since the Spring of 2020 – is also being shut down on June 30th, as per legal requirements.

The SI-DEP shutdown means that it will also be impossible to retrieve Covid test certificates issued before June 30th, should the need arise. All data held by the database will be “destroyed”, officials have said.

It has handled more than 320 million antigen and PCR tests since it was introduced.

This does not mean that testing for Covid-19 has stopped, or is now unnecessary. As reported recently, more than 1,000 deaths a week in Europe are still caused by the virus.

The shutdown of the national information system does not mean that people in France cannot still book an appointment for an antigen test at a pharmacy, or a PCR test at a laboratory. But the number of people going for testing is declining rapidly. In recent days, according to Le Parisien, just 15,000 people in France took a Covid test – the lowest number, it said, since the pandemic started.

Reimbursement rules for testing changed on March 1st, with only certain categories of people – minors, those aged 65 and over, or immunosuppressed patients – covered for the entire cost of testing.

From Friday, only PCR test results will be transmitted to authorities for data purposes, meaning pharmacists that only offer antigen testing will be locked out of the online interface to record test results.

The reason for the shift in priorities is to maintain “minimal epidemiological surveillance”, the Ministry of Health has reportedly told scientists.

As a result test certificates, showing a positive or negative result, will no longer be issued from July 1st. Since February 1st, anyone taking a test has had to give consent to share their data in order to obtain a certificate. 

SHOW COMMENTS