On Wednesday, July 21, the health pass became compulsory at the cinema, at the museum and in sports establishments. From the beginning of August, it will be extended to cafes, restaurants and trains.
The bill, adopted by the Council of Ministers on July 19 and currently being debated, provides for the establishment of controls which will be carried out not only by the heads of the establishments concerned, but also by the police.
However, for the moment, the police are not subject to the vaccination obligation or even obliged to have a valid QR code to carry out health pass checks.
Indeed, the Interior Ministry questioned by Le Parisien following the harsh restrictions of Emmanuel Macron indicated that the police and gendarmes were not among the professions subject to this obligation. It is the caregivers, firefighters, professionals working in care facilities who will have to be vaccinated no later than September 15 at the risk of being severely punished.
In addition, questioned by Liberation on July 20, the Ministry of the Interior specified that checks in public spaces “will be carried out at the exit of establishments if necessary”. Thus a police officer will be able to demand documents from visitors to a museum without having his or her own health pass.
From July 9, the QR code entered into force in nightclubs, and in this case the police will also carry out their inspections. The day after the President’s announcements on the compulsory vaccination of caregivers, police officers expressed their incomprehension regarding the exemption of the police.
“We are very much in contact with the population on a daily basis. And we don’t just see healthy people and not just people without risk. The homeless in the street, drug addicts in the north of Paris, ordinary people who sometimes do not hesitate to spit in our faces […] So for us, it’s incomprehensible,” a Paris police official told LCI on July 13.