COUNCIL OF STATE: IMMINENT DECISION
The Council of State will issue its order on Monday at the latest after the State’s request to annul decisions by administrative courts in Strasbourg and Lyon asking to relax the general obligation to wear a mask in certain territories.
As a reminder, the administrative justice ordered Thursday to the prefecture of Bas-Rhin and Friday to the prefecture of the Rhône to issue a new decree, excluding places that are not characterized “by a high population density” or “circumstances local areas likely to promote the spread “of the coronavirus. The two courts, seized by two Alsatian hospital practitioners and by the Lyon association “Les Essentialistes Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes”, also asked the two prefectures to lift the obligation to wear a mask in “the hourly periods during which no risk particular spread of this virus does not exist “.
During the hearing, Sunday morning, before the Council of State, Charles Touboul, director of legal affairs at the Ministry of Health, said that faced with an increase in viral circulation “exponential”, according to the most recent point of Public Health France situation, the government wants “an intelligible and understandable standard for all” while being limited to densely populated areas. A device that would create exemptions by streets or time slots would send “a very strong negative” message to the population “as to the need to wear a mask, according to him.
The lawyer for Alsatian hospital practitioners and the Lyon association, Me Régis Froger, replied that his clients “do not in themselves contest the wearing of masks” and are not “conspirators”. “The question is the efficiency of the mask outside, which is much less imperative than in an enclosed environment,” he said.
— .
