We’ve been forgotten in COVID-19 easing, say French restaurants
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Restaurant owner Jean Avarello is struggling to understand why in the next few weeks the shops and theatres near him in the French city of Marseille will be allowed to reopen after a COVID-19 lockdown, but he has to stay shut.
“That’s not okay,” Avarello said on Thursday as he took part in a protest in Marseille involving several thousand people from the restaurant, bar and nightclub sector against the government order to keep them shut. “We feel we’ve been forgotten.”
Demonstrators gathered at the city’s old port, then marched to the office of the prefect — the most senior representative of central government in the region — where they were granted a meeting to convey their views.
Outside, protesters set off flares and smoke bombs, and one person, dressed in a chef’s tunic and toque, carried a mock-up of a gravestone with the inscription: “Here lies my restaurant.”
France will this weekend start a phased easing of its lockdown, imposed to curb a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
That is now starting to abate, and non-essential shops will re-open this weekend, while museums and cinemas can welcome back visitors from Dec. 15.
