French Constitutional Council greenlights health pass to enter restaurants

Paris, Aug 5 (EFE).- The French Constitutional Council greenlit on Thursday a controversial law passed in Parliament that includes the obligation to carry a health pass to enter bars and restaurants and a Covid-19 vaccination mandate for health care workers.

The Constitutional Council — tasked with ensuring that laws comply with the country’s constitution — gave its final approval for the law, which will expand the use of the health pass to certify a person’s full vaccination, negative test results or recovery from the disease in the past six months.

The pass was already required to enter certain establishments, such as museums or cinema theatres, and will be extended to bars, restaurants and shopping malls from Monday August 9.

The Constitutional Court deemed the protection these measures provide against the spread of Covid-19 outweigh the affront to liberties denounced by groups opposing the bill.

The health pass will also become obligatory in hospitals and medical centres for people visiting or accompanying patients, but under no circumstance to limit the access of people in need of treatment.

Not every disposition was accepted by the council, which censored the possibility for employers to prematurely end temporary contracts of workers not carrying a health pass.

The institution also blocked the intended mandatory 10-days confinement for people testing positive for Covid-19. EFE

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