France is set to suspend their “vaccine passport” program on March 14 just before citizens head to the polls national elections.
QUICK FACTS:
- France is suspending its “vaccine passport” program on March 14, according to The National File.
- The suspension of the program comes just over a month before the national presidential elections, as federal officials stare down the possibility that COVID-19 mandates could work against their reelection campaigns.
- Proof of vaccination has been required for entry to gyms, coffee shops, cinemas, and dozens of other venues across the nation since August.
- French Prime Minister Jean Castex told TF1 television on Thursday that the change is due to the fact that the “health situation is improving.”
- Public transportation is the only exception to the vaccine passport rule, and the vaccine passport system will be “suspended” except for use in elderly care and nursing homes.
RESPONSE TO THE VACCINE PASSPORTS PROTESTS:
- “You’ve understood – vaccination is not immediately obligatory for everyone, but we’re going to extend the health pass to the maximum, in order to push a maximum of you to go and get vaccinated,” French President Emmanual Macron said last August.
- Macron doubled down on the passports when the negative responses streamed in, however, saying “I am not about pissing off the French people,” Macron told French magazine Le Parisien in January. “But as for the non-vaccinated, I really want to piss them off. And we will continue to do this, to the end. This is the strategy.”
BACKGROUND:
- The vaccine passport program was met with intense protests.
- However, Macron and other government officials have backed away from their mandates now, with the elections just weeks away, joining Sweden, Ireland, and the U.K. along with several other European nations.
