As the waning winter sun sets over the Champagne region of France, the countdown clock begins.
Workers stop pruning vines as the light disappears at 4:30 p.m., allowing them 90 minutes to get in from the cold, put on their work clothes, hop in their cars and zoom in on a coronavirus evening clock at 18:00.
Forget about after-work hanging out with friends, kindergartens for kids or shopping at night, without traveling fast. Police on patrol demand valid reasons from people in the area. For those without them, the threat of fines for curfews makes life in a pandemic increasingly difficult.
“At 18:00, life stops,” says Champagne producer Alexandre Prat.
In an effort to stave off the need for a third nationwide shutdown that would complicate Europe’s second-largest economy and jeopardize more jobs, France is opting for the extension of the curfew. Large stretches of eastern France, including most of the regions bordering Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Italy, are restricted in traffic from 18:00 to 06:00. At twelve o’clock the evening bell is the longest in the 27 countries of the European Union.
From Saturday, the rest of France will follow his example. The prime minister on Thursday announced an extension of the evening clock from 6 to 6 p.m. to cover the entire country, including areas where the deadline for home has not yet started at 8 p.m.
French shops must close at 18:00. Outdoor activities will stop, with the exception of quick walks for pets. Workers need employer letters to commute to evening clock or move for work.
Those who have lived the last few weeks with the longer evening clock say it is often bad for business and for the remnants of their social anemia during the pandemic.
Until a few weeks ago, the night clock only started at 20:00 in Prat’s region, the Marne. Customers still came into the house to buy bottles of his family’s sparkling wines, he said. But when the cut-off time was extended to 6pm to delay coronavirus infections, the drinkers disappeared.
“Now we have no one,” Prat said.
The village where retired Jerome Brunault lives alone in the Burgundian wine region is also in one of the evening clock areas at 6pm. The 67-year-old says his loneliness weighs heavier without the opportunity for drinks, nights and chats with friends, the so-called apéro gatherings so beloved among the French that they were more hasty, yet feasible when the evening bell began two hours later.
“With the evening clock at 6 p.m., we can no longer go drinking with friends for a drink,” Brunault said. “I spend my days not talking to anyone except the baker and some people on the phone.”
By extending the evening clock nationwide at 6 p.m., for at least 15 days, the government aims to curb infections in the country that have seen more than 69,000 COVID-19 deaths. It also wants to delay the spread of a particularly contagious virus variant through neighboring Britain, where new infections and virus deaths have skyrocketed.
An earlier curfew rules the transfer “precisely because it limits the social interaction people may have at the end of the day – for example in private homes,” said Gabriel Attal, spokesman for the French government.
Bells elsewhere in Europe all start later and often end earlier.
The evening clock in Italy lasts from 22:00 to 05:00, just like the evening clock in Latvia which runs from Friday evening to Sunday morning. Parts of Belgium have an evening clock from 22:00 to 06:00.
People between 20:00 and 05:00 in Hungary must be able to show the police written proof from their employers that they are working or commuting.
There is no curfew in Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Lithuania, Malta, Sweden, Poland or the Netherlands, although the Dutch government is considering introducing a curfew rule.
In France, critics of the 18:00 evening clock say the earlier time that people actually congregate more for work, when they pile on public transport, block roads and buy groceries in a narrow window before they have to go home.
Female rugby coach Felicie Guinot says the negotiation of rush hour traffic in Marseille has become a nightmare. The city in the south of France is one of the places where the more contagious coronavirus variant has started to flare up.
“It’s a hustle and bustle so everyone can be home by 6pm,” Guinot said.
In the historic Besancon, the fortress town, the hometown of “Les Miserables” writer Victor Hugo, the owner of the music store Jean-Charles Valley says that the deadline at 18:00 means that people will no longer drop in to work with to play the guitars and other instruments he sells. . Instead, they rush home.
“People are completely demoralized,” Valley said.
In Dijon, the French city known for its spicy mustard, the working mother of two children, Celine Bourdin, said her life was reduced to dropping children off at school and going to work, then back home, children with homework help and prepare dinner. ‘
But even the cycle is better than a repeat of the closure of France at the start of the pandemic, when schools also closed, Bourdin said.
“If my children do not go to school, it means I can no longer work,” she said. “It was terribly difficult to get stuck in the house for almost 24 hours a day.”