- Sunday onwards, France will be in the face of a stricter lockdown including border control
- France would close borders to non-European Union countries except for essential travel
- All visitors from other EU nations would have to show a negative PCR test certificate except for cross-border workers
THoD Newsdesk, France: Sunday onwards, France will be in the face of a stricter lockdown including border control, in an effort to arrest the pandemic from further spreading, the PM remarked. On Friday after a defence council, PM Jean Castex said, “We will do everything we can to avoid a new lockdown”.
Castex admitted that “the question of confinement is a legitimate one” as “the development of (the virus) variants poses a high risk of accelerating the pandemic”, Xinhua news agency reported. “But we know the very heavy impact (of lockdown) for French people. We believe that we can still give ourselves a chance to avoid it,” he added.
In an attempt to complement a nightly curfew, which “produces real effects but insufficient”, France would close borders to non-European Union countries except for essential travel, starting from Sunday. “Any entry into France and any exit from our territory to or from a country outside the European Union (EU) will be prohibited, unless there is a compelling reason, from 12 a.m. on Sunday,” the Prime Minister said. All visitors from other EU nations would have to show a negative PCR test certificate except for cross-border workers, Castex mentioned.
Shopping malls with a surface area of more than 20,000 square metres will be closed, and police controls will be intensified against people breaking the curfew and testing will be reinforced, he added.
“Our duty is to do everything possible to avoid a new confinement and the coming days will be decisive,” Castex said. “Let’s be very vigilant.”
France went into a strict national lockdown from March 17 to May 11, 2020, to contain the first wave of the contagious coronavirus. From the end of October to mid-December 2020, a less stringent lockdown was set in motion and on January 16, 2021, the curfew which has been in place since mid-December, was extended by two hours.
