Local leaders launch legal challenge to closure of Marseille restaurants over Covid

A protester holds a placard reading "Veran (Health Minister) killed me" during a demonstration by bars and restaurants owners in Marseille

Credit: NICOLAS TUCAT /AFP

Protesters angered by the closure of bars and restaurants in Marseille blocked traffic on Monday as the conservative president of the region launched legal action in a bid to overturn the latest coronavirus restrictions.

Restaurateurs and bar owners fearing for their livelihoods took to the streets on the first day of the two-week closure, aimed at stemming an alarming increase in Covid-19 infections. Local officials say the government in Paris decided the measure against their advice.

Renaud Muselier, the centre-Right president of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, joined local business leaders in filing a class action lawsuit challenging the restriction, which applies to Marseille and nearby Aix-en-Provence. Mr Muselier says the measure is an “unfair collective punishment” while restaurants in other French cities are allowed to remain open.

Marseille and Aix, together home to 1.9 million people, have been placed on “maximum alert”, one step before a return to total lockdown. Eleven other French cities, including Paris and Lyon, are on “heightened alert”, which means they are subject to less strict rules and bars must close from 10pm starting on Monday.

Samia Ghali, Marseille’s deputy mayor, has openly defied the government order, saying local police will not impose fines on bars and restaurants that stay open. But most remained shuttered on the first day of the ban as Elisabeth Borne, the employment minister, warned that “those who disobey will face penalties”.

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Mr Muselier stressed that he did not want restaurateurs and bar owners to take the law into their own hands. “I reject civil disobedience: if we challenge a rule, we do so while abiding by the rules. It’s the law that will decide,” he said.

The French government is resisting growing pressure from health experts for a second national lockdown as it seeks to limit disruption to people’s lives.

Leading French doctors have called for “drastic measures” to avert a second wave which they believe could overwhelm the health service and be more damaging than the first.

One of Italy’s leading experts on the coronavirus urged France to declare a lockdown because of its rapidly rising number of cases. Walter Ricciardi, an adviser to the Italian health ministry on the pandemic, told La Stampa newspaper on Monday: "Intensive care units in Nice and Marseilles are starting to move patients to Paris. This, along with the growing number of infections, cannot but lead to a lockdown.”

However, a leading French epidemiologist questioned the effectiveness of lockdown. “I compare it to freezing a piece of rotting meat. You halt the problem while it’s in the freezer, then it starts rotting again when you take it out,” Catherine Hill told BFM TV. “That’s what we’ve seen with infections increasing again after lockdown. They’re being spread by asymptomatic carriers of the virus and the only way to deal with this is mass testing, so we can isolate them.”