The president of the Metropolitan and Meurthe-et-Moselle CCI does not understand the government strategy and he does not mince his words to say it.
Imagine François Pélissier pumped up. He expresses his anger in a speech where the seams of the sentences creak. Speech is profuse. He blasts the arguments of those who have put so-called non-essential commerce to a halt. Lively, passionate, very involved in this cause, the president of the chamber of commerce and industry defends his positions. Some talk about egotistical postures, let’s say rather that he is in agreement with himself. Swordsman, rhetorician, mover of conformisms, François Pélissier denounces the degree of unpreparedness of the ruling class. We believe him to be carried away by his temperament, condemned to the role of perpetual “fireworks blaster”, on the contrary he delivers his sentences with mastery and conviction. What does he hope for after this new phase of confinement, the conditions of application of which seem detrimental to economic activity? Clarity and a precise horizon line for traders trying to survive.
What do you think of the fate of local commerce?
François Pélissier: It’s not possible to govern like that. We can’t discover everything one evening when we are told: “that’s it, shut up”. We couldn’t even anticipate a few days to imagine, for example, city center concierge services, or even logistics, click & collect, etc. There is nothing. No anticipation, no preparation. Two weeks ago, masks for six-year-old children, we were told: “ it’s nonsense “, today we are told that it is obligatory. And everything like that. I have the impression that we are in the same unpreparedness as in March, with all health measures everywhere. While there is no cluster in small businesses, no cluster in VSEs. We know exactly where the spread of the virus comes from: student parties, the beach in August. That all countries are being surprised today, yes perhaps, but the contrast with Germany where everything is not closed in terms of city center commerce is striking. People continue to move around, we simply check that all health precautions are respected. In our country, do we leave large stores open and not small businesses? It doesn’t make sense. And there, we pulled from the bottom, since the supermarkets are stopping the sale of many things. Now no one works anymore
How is it possible to rectify things?
For me, it is very clear: click&collect and individualized appointments must be accepted. The passerby who goes into town with his mask and who enters a business with the limitations that can be put in place is not a spreader of the virus. This is not true. Stop everything? This is the solution to put an end to all tobacco-related problems. There are 60,000 deaths from lung cancer per year, why don’t we close the tobacconists? I don’t understand why we still sell alcohol since it causes 50,000 deaths per year. Let’s stop everything! I am exaggerating, of course, but we cannot make a people adhere to difficult measures without this being understood. There is no collective work. The chambers of commerce were not even consulted by the government. We learned everything on TV. Either they reopen on November 16 with the essential health measures already in force in businesses, or I don’t know what will happen. Today, there is no one left, people are dropping out. All this because we are told that there are 3,500 occupied intensive care beds out of the 7,000. What does that mean? We don’t know how to quickly open beds elsewhere? We are in the process of killing all economic activity through negligence in public hospital management for thirty years. This is why many companies will disappear.
What are you going to do to try to avoid economic catastrophe?
We just had a meeting with the Vitrines. People are devastated. They say “ we don’t understand, we are punished even though we are virtuous. We have put in place all the barrier gestures, we have all bought Plexiglas, masks, put in place hydroalcoholic gel, we are welcoming people slowly. They could tell us no more than one every ten square meters and no, they force us to close completely “. It’s a lack of discernment that is unbearable. We are faced with a type of situation where we are never sure that a grain of sand, a small blunder, will not cause a fight and set a society ablaze. I had worked a lot on Elie Wiesel’s phrase which said that a society only survives if, in terms of governance and information, we respect five stages. The first is that of the event. In the second step, this event is transformed into information. During the third stage, information must pass into knowledge. In relation to Covid, knowledge is “ how many deaths does the epidemic cause globally compared to other diseases? “. From knowledge we move to step four, which is awareness. Finally, the last step consists of transforming this awareness into citizen engagement. Elie Wiesel added: “ you have to respect these five steps, otherwise it gets tense ».
If we look at what is happening with Covid, we remain on stage two, that of information. And this information is truncated because we are given the number of deaths every day without indicating the number of deaths linked to other pathologies. We are told about contact cases, infected people but, from the moment we test more and more, it seems logical. The information is biased by all those who monopolize the television channels to feed a deadly side because it captures the viewer. It’s dramatic and I think that the government is not doing enough.
Essential and non-essential businesses, what does this notion inspire you?
What does that mean? Especially considering the complexity of today’s society? If we don’t buy a book for a month, two months, three months, a priori it’s not dramatic but if, in the end, the whole publishing industry collapses, all SMEs are affected. And finally it is essential because we have just put thousands of people out of work. This notion of essential or non-essential does not make sense. What is disappointing is that I have the impression that our leaders have not learned much from the first wave of the epidemic. It’s frankly bizarre and quite worrying.
