A French Call to Arms Against the Virus

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/opinion/france-coronavirus-macron.html

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PARIS — With the spread of the coronavirus accelerating at an alarming rate in France, President Emmanuel Macron addressed the nation Monday evening with a call for mobilization. Before millions of television viewers, he looked directly into the camera and declared, “We are at war.” In 20 minutes, he said it six times.

Mr. Macron announced new restrictions on daily life that will keep the French confined to their homes, except for brief forays to shop for food or to go to indispensable jobs. It was his second attempt in five days to rally the unruly French and convince them that the only way to fight the virus was to accept social distancing.

It has not been easy. After the terrorist attacks in Paris on Nov. 13, 2015, that killed 130 people, many of them gunned down at cafe terraces, Parisians took pride in going out again, in a defiant collective gesture. The hashtag #JeSuisEnTerrasse flourished on social networks, echoing the earlier slogan “Je Suis Charlie” that had followed the attack on Charlie Hebdo’s journalists some months earlier. Last week, faced with an even deadlier enemy, the invisible virus, Parisians were instructed to do exactly the opposite by a new hashtag: #RestezChezVous (Stay Home).

In a previous TV address on Thursday, March 12, Mr. Macron announced that nurseries, schools and colleges were being shut down. This did not prevent the French from flocking, during last weekend, to bars and restaurants as though joie de vivre could beat the coronavirus. Then, with Mr. Macron’s TV speech on Monday, came new restrictions, closing all public places and businesses other than food stores, pharmacies, newsstands and banks. Should he have also canceled the local elections, held the day before?

President Macron’s instinct had been to postpone the vote, but according to his entourage, fear of breaking up a budding national unity made him give in to the pressure of center-right party leaders, optimistic about their own electoral gains.

That was a fateful mistake. While the voting turnout was low, the number of picnickers in parks and along the Seine River on that sunny Sunday was shockingly high, infuriating medical experts, who were painfully aware of the danger as hospitals filled up.

Hence the warrior rhetoric, with a call for social responsibility. “We fight neither against an army nor against another nation, but the enemy is there, invisible, elusive and advancing,” President Macron said, invoking the language of Georges Clemenceau, the prime minister who led France during World War I. This is what it took to justify a lockdown similar to that being enforced by Italy and Spain.

The results were clear on Tuesday, when the new rules kicked in. Finally, the French are staying at home. At 8 o’clock each night since, emulating the Italians, Parisians have been leaning out of their windows and clapping in unison to thank hospital workers. In one neighborhood, a resident put a boom box out the window playing Edith Piaf singing “Hymne à l’amour” (“A Hymn to Love”), and nearby residents joined in.

Are the French also, finally, united? Recent polls showing that a majority trust the government to handle the coronavirus crisis properly may sound like a miracle for an unpopular young president of a deeply fractured country, shaken by strikes and yellow vests. But it is a thin majority, and the war has yet to be won.

This crisis is a study in contrasts as the countries of the European Union take different lines of approach. In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel also addressed her fellow citizens on Monday evening. Instead of declaring war, she listed every commercial and social activity about to be suspended, including “brothels, places of prostitution and similar facilities.”

“I do prefer Chancellor Merkel’s language,” Reinhard Bütikofer, a European Parliament member for the German Greens, wrote on Twitter after Mr. Macron spoke. “She talks to us as citizens, not as soldiers. Fighting a virus is not a war.”

François Godement, a French scholar on China, begged to differ. “Please bear in mind war has less of a bad name here,” he tweeted back, explaining that what President Macron meant “is mobilization and social discipline — something we are not good at.” Two days later, Ms. Merkel was back on TV, this time more solemn, to implore the Germans to take the situation seriously.

It is a war on two fronts — the health crisis, with its tragic human cost, and the looming economic catastrophe. Europe, not France, is the battleground, though each country is retreating behind its borders, awkwardly convinced that national responses will prove more effective against a disease that knows no borders.

Not only must we brace ourselves for the prospect of “many more families losing loved ones,” as Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, has warned, but in a matter of days, our world and our way of life have dramatically shifted. Globalization has given way to fragmentation, leaders seem powerless, global governance has evaporated, and the sustainability of our economic model is in serious doubt. Doctors and nurses are our new heroes.

The go-it-alone chain reaction has been a huge political shock. In 2009, Western leaders set up the G20 to fight that year’s financial crisis. Last week, the French president had to call his American counterpart, for the second time in 10 days, to remind him that America heads the G7 this year; maybe summon a G7 coronavirus summit by videoconference? President Trump agreed … and left it to France to organize it. The summit was held Monday and produced promises of coordination, despite tensions over travel restrictions and the race to develop a vaccine.

European leaders may eventually muster enough political will to organize a common economic response. “Whatever it takes” is the new mantra, but Christine Lagarde, the head of the European Central Bank, found out the hard way last week that “whatever it takes” has lost its power, when markets plunged right after her news conference.

Against this background of great fragility, where economists talk about rethinking global supply chains, the welfare state has regained its old glory, along with the essential role of government. Forget Europe or the World Health Organization; it is the state that protects, and saves lives and small businesses. A strong public health system is part of the European identity and we are suddenly deeply grateful for it.

In his TV address last week, Mr. Macron pointed out “how precious are our welfare state and free health care, indispensable assets when fate strikes.” This pandemic, he went on, “has revealed that some goods and services must be put outside the rules of the market. To delegate to others our food, our protection, our ability to take care of our way of life is folly.”

On Monday, he revisited this theme. We will learn a lot from this war, he assured his audience: “Many of our convictions will be swept away. Many things are happening that we thought impossible. The day after will not be going back to the day before.” Mr. Macron’s vision of a harmonious globalization and a strong united Europe is severely tested, and he knows he will have to adjust to a new world. Whatever it takes.

Sylvie Kauffmann is the editorial director and a former editor in chief of Le Monde, and a contributing opinion writer.

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