The senators are looking from this Tuesday on the transformation of the health pass

The obstacle course continues for the government. After passing the hedge of deputies, the executive sees this Tuesday the Senate, dominated by the right-wing opposition, in turn seize the bill transforming the health pass into a vaccination pass. The text should however be voted on at first reading, but with “adjustments”.

The examination in the hemicycle, that the LR chairman of the commission of laws François-Noël Buffet wishes “appeased and serious”, is scheduled from this afternoon and can continue on Wednesday, evenings included. “There will still be difficult debates,” the rapporteur LR Philippe Bas warned on Monday evening after the vote on the amended text in committee.

Larcher and Véran present

The president of the Senate Gérard Larcher will himself be on the set to kick off the discussion, a priori pledge of a good holding of the exchanges, after three days and nights of agitated debates in the National Assembly. The Minister of Health Olivier Véran, whom the senators reproach for being rare at the Luxembourg Palace, will also be present for the opening of the debates.

“We will vote overwhelmingly the vaccine pass”, promised Monday the president of the LR group Bruno Retailleau, in an interview with Echos. The centrists should be on the same line. The PS senators can for their part hardly oppose the vaccination pass while they advocate a general vaccination obligation. But they reserve their position.

In the Assembly, the deputies postponed from 12 to 16 years the need for a vaccination pass for school trips and peri and extracurricular activities. But the senators have simplified things by planning to limit the possibility of requiring the presentation of a vaccination pass to people over 18 years of age. Minors aged 12 to 17 would remain subject to the obligation to present a health pass.

The Senate wants an “automatic extinction”

Another major modification, which the Republicans are particularly keen on: Philippe Bas has provided for a mechanism for “automatic extinction” of the vaccination pass. Thus, it could only be imposed when the number of hospitalizations linked to Covid-19 would be greater than 10,000 patients nationally and would automatically disappear below this threshold. Hospitals now have nearly 23,000 Covid-19 patients.

Under 10,000 patients, the vaccination pass could only be maintained in the departments where the complete vaccination rate is less than 80% of the population and with a high incidence rate. The senators have also purely and simply deleted the provisions relating to the control of teleworking in companies.

On the left, the predominantly communist CRCE group, already firmly opposed to the health pass, sees the vaccination pass as “a new step in the attack on fundamental freedoms”. The senatorial majority also has a certain number of opponents determined to the vaccination pass, such as LR Alain Houpert and Laurence Muller-Bronn, or the centrist Loïc Hervé.