French President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday he was accelerating plans to ease the country’s coronavirus lockdown to revive the euro zone’s second biggest economy more swiftly.
“The fight against the epidemic is not finished but I am happy about this first victory against the virus,” he said in a televised address.
Macron also said that he would work on making the country, and Europe, less reliant on foreign countries as the pandemic has exposed “our dependence to other continents to get our hands on some goods”.
He added that all French schools, except high schools, would fully reopen from June 22, a move that will allow more parents to return to work and give students at least a few days with their teachers before the summer break.
The president also confirmed that the second round of municipal elections originally set for March, when the government imposed the lockdown against the virus, would go ahead as planned on June 28.
But mass gatherings will remain “tightly controlled” for now, since “they are the main occasions for spreading the virus,” he stated.
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