PARIS (AP) – As the waning winter sun sets over the Champagne region of France, the countdown clock begins.
Workers stop pruning the vines as the light dims around 4:30 p.m., leaving them 90 minutes to get in from the cold, put on their work clothes, hop in their cars and move home in front of a coronavirus evening clock at 6 p.m.
Forget about any after-work partying with friends, nursery schools for kids or any evening shopping, except for quick trips. Police on patrol demand valid reasons from people seen. For those without them, the threat of fines for evening clock breakers makes life more and more work and no game.
“At 18:00, life stops,” says Champagne producer Alexandre Prat.
In an effort to stave off the need for a third rural exclusion, which would further complicate Europe’s second largest economy and jeopardize more jobs, France is opting for creeping outcasts. Large parts of eastern France, including most of the regions bordering Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Italy, live under 6 to 6 hour restrictions on movement. At 12 o’clock, the evening clock 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 with the longer evening clock over the past few weeks say it is often bad for business and for the remnants of their anemic social lives during the pandemic.
Until a few weeks ago, the night clock only started at 20:00 in Prat’s region, the Marne. Customers still stopped to buy bottles of his family’s sparkling wines on the way home, he said. But when the cut-off time was extended to 6pm to delay viral 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 zones that has already been shut down at 18:00. , the so-called “apero” gatherings so popular among the French, that they were hasty, yet attainable, 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 now 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 known virus 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.
A previous curfew is fighting the transmission of viruses “precisely because it limits social interactions that 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, as well as the Friday night to Sunday morning clock in Latvia. French-speaking regions of Belgium have an evening clock from 22:00 to 06:00, while in the Dutch-speaking region of Belgium it is midnight to 5 o’clock.
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 delaying the introduction of curfew new COVID-19 cases.
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 virus variant has started to flare up.
“It’s a hustle and bustle so everyone can be home by 6pm,” Guinot said.
In the historic Besançon, the fortress town that was the hometown of “Les Misérables” writer Victor Hugo, the owner of the music store Jean-Charles Valley says that the deadline at 18:00 means that people 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 sharp mustard, working mother of two, Celine Bourdin, says her life has been reduced to ‘dropping children off at school and going to work, then back home, helping children with homework and prepare dinner. ‘
But even the cycle is better than a repeat of France’s closure 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.”
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Leicester reported from Le Pecq, France. AP journalists across Europe contributed.
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