Masks are no longer mandatory outdoors in France from Thursday, while the curfew will be dropped completely come this Sunday.
French Prime Minister Jean Castex made the announcement on Wednesday as the country now registers about 3,900 new daily virus cases on average, down from the 35,000 peak in March-April.
He also said the curfew will be lifted on Sunday, 10 days earlier than expected.
Meanwhile, late Wednesday evening, it was announced that students no longer needed to wear masks outdoors in school.
Over 58% of France’s adult population has received at least one Covid-19 vaccine dose. On Tuesday, the country opened its vaccination programs to 12 to 18-year-olds as part of a push to protect the population as restrictions are gradually being lifted.
The Monaco Government is due to make its next announcement about restrictions at the end of June. In its two-weekly assessment on 10th June, the government stopped short of dropping mandatory masks outdoors in the Principality as Covid circulation figures increase slightly.
In light of France’s decision, the National Council has renewed its call for the Monaco government to drop its mandatory mask rule for outdoors.
Monaco will not be welcoming cruise ships to its shores again this year because of Covid, a move that will strike a severe blow to local souvenir shops and museums who count heavily on trade from this source to keep operations afloat.
Finance Minister Jean Castellini told L’Observateur de Monaco the bad news, stating that the ban on cruise ships will last beyond the summer to include all of 2021. The reasoning behind the decision is all-too-clear. Simply put, it’s dangerous.
If a health situation arises on one of these floating cities, it is extremely difficult to manage, and even harder to isolate, as the nature of the cruise is to take passengers from port to port, exposing them and the inhabitants of the host cities to possible Covid infections. The risk of spreading the virus is therefore intensified, potentially triggering another crisis.
“These cruise ships have known strong contaminations, numerous cases on board, and we cannot envisage in the near future, nor even by fixing any date today, to accept again the activity of cruise in Principality,” Jean Castellini said back in April 2020,
An example of just such a situation occurred back in 2020, where more than 3,700 passengers and crew were stuck onboard in the Port of Yokohama, Japan for several weeks in confinement. The ship saw 700 cases, including 13 deaths. The handling of the situation was criticised by many as the cruise ships are not like airplanes which use HEPA filters to clean the air, nor were consistent and efficient “borders” put up to keep those infected from those virus-free. This left the gate open to infect people who otherwise would have come out unscathed.
Photo by Matt Roskovec on Unsplash
"The thrills, spills, hits and speed will make Monaco a huge success"
As a former rugby sevens player for Wales, Mark Thomas gives his take on this weekend’s World Rugby Sevens Repechage and revisits Monaco’s love affair with the sport.
Monaco, for most sports fans, is associated with Formula 1 and the Rolex Tennis Masters. But many do not know that Monaco has a long-standing love affair with rugby that dates back many decades.
This weekend from 18th to 20th June, the Monaco Rugby Federation and World Rugby, in partnership with the Government, are organising the World Rugby Sevens Repechage tournament at the Louis II Stadium.
Monaco will be hosting the international men’s and women’s sevens teams competing for the final Tokyo Olympic Games qualification places. For the women, the two best teams will secure a spot in Tokyo, but only one of the men’s teams will be lucky enough to head to Japan.
The pressure will be huge. Win in Monaco and you become an Olympian, the Holy Grail for many athletes. Additionally, organisers have confirmed that 5,000 fans will be able to watch the Olympic Games Sevens on the two main days of competition at the stadium so there should be a great atmosphere and the forecast is for fine weather. Louis II Stadium in Monaco Where it all began
Back in 1987 and 1988, Monaco hosted their first international rugby sevens event, the Glenlivet Invitational Sevens, where superstars like Serge Blanco and Denis Charvet won with France in 1987 and then Nick Farr Jones, Murray Mexted and Will Carling won the trophy with the Bahrain Warblers in 1988.
I was fortunate to play for the Welsh team during those years and while we lost to the French in the final, I have very fond memories of the event. It is what motivated me to come to France to play rugby, and eventually to end up living in Monaco. They say sport changes the world. It certainly changed mine, and for that I shall ever be grateful to sevens rugby, which allowed me to travel as a young man and play all over the world in tournaments in 24 countries.
Rugby sevens originated in Melrose, Scotland as far back as the 1880s, and the Melrose Sevens tournament is still played annually today. The popularity of rugby sevens increased further with the development of the Hong Kong Sevens in the 1970s and was later followed by the inclusion of the sport into the Commonwealth Games for the first time in 1998 and the establishment of the annual World Rugby Sevens Series in 1999 and the World Rugby Women’s Sevens Series in 2012. In 2016, rugby sevens was contested in the Summer Olympics for the first time. The teams hoping to make it to Tokyo
Rugby sevens is expected to be one of the most highly anticipated events of the Tokyo Games following the outstanding success of the Rugby World Cup 2019 in Japan, which captured the nation’s imagination with record-breaking broadcast audiences and huge numbers of new rugby fans across Japan and Asia. The inclusion of rugby sevens for the first time in the Olympic Games at Rio 2016 had a profound effect on the sport, attracting an estimated 30 million new fans globally.
The women’s competition will feature Argentina, Colombia, France, Hong Kong, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Madagascar, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Russia, Samoa and Tunisia. The men’s tournament will involve Chile, France, Hong Kong, Ireland, Jamaica, Mexico, Samoa, Tonga, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
The women’s final is expected to be a close affair, and the favourites – France v Samoa – should be a nail biter, but the Argentinians may have something to say about that.
The men’s draw saw the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series core teams, Samoa and Ireland, paired in Pool A together with Tonga, Zimbabwe and Mexico. France were the top seeded team based on their performances in 2020 at the World Rugby Sevens Series where they finished sixth. They are drawn in Pool B along with Hong Kong, Chile, Uganda and Jamaica. France being favoured to win, they will have to overcome the speedy Samoans, the tough Tongans and the wiry Irish. Prince Albert completed the draw for the World Rugby Sevens Repechage tournament in Monaco, photo by Monaco Rugby Sevens
As World Rugby Chief Executive Alan Gilpin said: “With Tokyo less than three months away, the rugby family is looking forward to what promises to be a special sevens tournament that personifies the togetherness, camaraderie and optimism that characterises these remarkable Olympic Games. The Monaco repechage is also symbolic in its own way – a reflection and celebration of sevens international re-emergence from the unprecedented challenges that society and sports people have faced.”
Given the Covid chaos globally, it has been extremely difficult to organise, but the drive to be in the Olympics has not deterred these teams from doing whatever it takes to get to Monaco to try to qualify. One of the potential qualifiers is Tonga. At the end of April, the Tonga Rugby Union announced that, due to quarantine rules in New Zealand, it would select a squad of European-based players to compete for the final men’s sevens spot at Tokyo. Viliami Vaki, the Tongan captain, said: “We have a playing group that are busting at the chops to get together, there’s nothing greater than playing for your country. That’s exciting because they are a level of player that have experienced different World Cups and professional competitions around the world.” Tonga could well be the dark horse in the men’s competition.
Hopeful Hong Kong Rugby coaches Paul John (winner of the RWC 7s with Wales in 2009) and Iain Monaghan, the two Celts charged with getting their respective teams to Tokyo, have been thinking outside of the box in a bid to keep things interesting. Monaghan revealed that he actually sent his players on a metaphorical journey around the world. “We shaped training around going up the seven summits of the world – Everest, Aconcagua, Denali, Kilimanjaro, Elbrus, Mount Vinson and the Carstensz Pyramid. Needless to say, I wasn’t the most liked coach at that time because they were worked, physically,” he said. “But with that it allowed us to learn about the different cultures of the teams we will play and where they come from, and the history of their sport.
“We set out tasks like passing the ball every day the equivalent distance it would take to climb one of the mountains, we camped out and learnt how to cook different national dishes, and learnt about tribes and their values and what makes them survive so long, and how we could maybe bring that into our high-performance environment… things that gave a different slant to training.”
Outsiders Uganda have been drawn alongside France, Chile, Hong Kong and Jamaica in Pool B of the men’s Olympic Repechage tournament, and have come up against Les Bleus twice at the Emirates Invitational Sevens in Dubai. The Cranes lost both matches against the French, but they have better records against the other teams they will play in Monaco. Uganda will arrive in the Principality on Sunday hoping to take the biggest step yet on the team’s journey under head coach Tolbert Onyango. Onyango is hopeful that his players are able to handle the pressure of playing in the tournament as they attempt to cause a few shocks and book their ticket to Tokyo.
“A knockout tournament normally comes with its own pressures,” said Onyango. “Pressure to perform properly throughout the tournament, so there’s no room for error — you snooze, you lose.”
Irish Rugby Football Union director of Sevens and Women’s rugby Anthony Eddy has selected an experienced group to travel to Monaco, with a dozen of the 14-man squad having featured on the HSBC World Rugby Sevens series previously for Ireland, with the uncapped duo Gavin Mullin and Ulster flyer Aaron Sextoncompleting the panel.
“A number of players have been preparing for this tournament and opportunity for a number of years and they all know exactly what is at stake,” said Anthony Eddy. “I know they will be determined to be at their best and put in a performance over the weekend that they can be proud of. All the teams participating are chasing the same outcome so we must be at our best and we are looking forward to it.”
France expect both their men’s and women’s teams to qualify and “are craving qualification”, according to France Sevens Women’s coach David Courteix. However, as the old wolf of the sevens stage that he is, David Courteix knows only too well the cost of too much confidence. “We will go to Monaco to have a performance and this will allow us, I hope, to qualify for the Games. But everyone will want it too! Nobody thinks that it will be a secured qualification.”
That will mean being very opportunistic and overly optimistic, because if they win this tournament, they will have the green lights to challenge the teams at the Olympics and will arrive in full confidence with a huge craving.
"An absolute classic, finished off by Billy Dardis"@IrishRugby will be hoping for more moments like this at the Olympic Repechage in Monaco next week! pic.twitter.com/HQ2EdqArH2
For the winning teams, it will be even more beneficial since they have played a very high-level competition a month before, they will have had the necessary preparation to be able to be ready in Tokyo. As French men’s coach Jerome Daret put it – as a good connoisseur of sevens and French gastronomy, “We can put all the ingredients in there, but what is important is to make the recipe on the day.”
Samoa have both their women’s Manusina and men’s Manu Samoa teams competing and the two teams came close to qualifying for Rio 2016, as Manu Samoa lost the repechage final to Spain on the last play of the match, while the country’s women were beaten by Kazakhstan in their quarter-final. Brian Lima is manager of the team, a legend of four Rugby World Cups and known as “The Chiroporactor” because he hit you so hard in the tackle you’d have to go see the chiropractor after the game. In one World Cup, he tackled somebody so hard he knocked himself out.
“I want Samoans to come together in Samoa to celebrate if Manusina qualify for the Olympics,” he told World Rugby. “We are confident we have the best team who wants to qualify for the Olympics. Our players have international experience and they’ve played the best sevens teams in the world like Australia, Fiji and New Zealand.”
Their plans for Olympic qualification have been affected by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic like everybody and Samoa’s men were last in action at the HSBC Canada Sevens in March 2020 where they lost their ninth-place semi-final to France — who will arguably be their biggest rivals for qualification in Monaco. “Losing to Spain [in the Rio 2016 repechage final] was really heartbreaking, so that’s what kept most of us in, to just keep the Olympic dream alive to come back and really find any opportunity to be an Olympian.” Careers will be made in Monaco
The spectacular thing about sevens is that anyone can have the “flyer”, the player who has such breath-taking speed no-one can stop them, and the stadium comes alive in anticipation. The entertainment and enjoyment of a sevens event is fantastic. The thrills, the spills, the hits, the speed will delight the crowd and I am sure it will be a huge success like it was four years ago.
This weekend is bound to show us some new rugby stars of the future as the sevens circuit is where many of the greats started their career – rugby legends such us Jonah Lomu, David Campese, Christian Cullen, Lawrence Dallaglio, George North and Cheslin Kobi all started on the sevens circuit. If anybody knows anything about sevens, anything can happen on the day.
As for the final, my pick is France v Samoa. The winner? We will have to wait and see.
Top photo of former Wales rugby player Mark Thomas
The first quarter of 2021 was marked by the pandemic in Monaco, but not to the extent of the previous year, according to IMSEE’s latest report.
IMSEE, the Monaco government’s statistical agency, on Tuesday released its Economic Bulletin for the first trimester of this year. Not surprisingly, the period was defined by the health crisis and the ongoing effects presented by it.
The Principality started its vaccination programme during this time and was fortunate to have been able to avoid a complete lockdown, allowing certain activities to continue, albeit under restrictive conditions. Despite this, many sectors suffered.
On a positive note, the global volume of trade outside of France progressed, with a +13.2% rise, equalling €625 million. This is encouraging, but it still remains well below the levels of 2018 and 2019.
Imports were up a modest +4.8% and it is mainly exports that have benefited from the upturn in international activity, rising +26.7%. The more marked increase in exports than imports mechanically reduces the trade balance deficit by -€91 million, and the cover rate (import/export) is recovering with 74.7% in 2021 versus 61.8% in 2020. Europe remains Monaco’s biggest trading partner and outside of France, Italy is the next biggest partner, followed by Germany and Belgium.
Turnover in Monaco excluding financial and insurance activities amounted to €3.22 billion, down €259 million compared to 2020, or -7.4%. Only large business sectors saw their turnover increase.
Retail saw a big jump on the previous year, with a +21.1% rise in sales figures. This is explained principally by a rise in the automobile trade, jewellery stores and art galleries.
There was also a rise in sales for those making products in rubber and plastic, as well as pharma, where they saw a €14 million gain equalling +7.7%.
Financial and insurance sectors took a big hit, down -39.1% on the previous year. Equally hard hit was the real estate and hospitality sectors who are down -41.3% and -40.1% respectively.
Private sector employment indicators were down in the first quarter. After seeing improvement at the end of 2020, the new year brought another downturn, with 51,390 active jobs in Monaco, a decrease of -3.9%. Catering and accommodation saw a 23.2% drop, though construction saw a +4.7% increase, showing some glimmer of positivity.
The creation of new businesses was down slightly from 208 in 2020 to 188 in 2021 and the number of failed businesses was also down, from 130 in 2020 to 118 in 2021. The activities who fuelled this were largely from the scientific and technology and administrative and support services sectors.
The main hotel indicators are still down sharply, as less tourists are arriving and average stays are decreasing. Only the month of March shows an increase in the occupancy rate of 57%, but still doesn’t touch previous years. The activities of cruise passengers remain at a standstill following the closure of territorial waters and air traffic remains significantly down as well. Due to the limitation of air traffic, the lion’s share of visitors remain very largely European at over 90%.
The real estate market is down compared to the previous years as well. New builds remain at a very low level but comparable to what it usually is during this first quarter. The real estate resale market is down -4% in volume but -27% in value. January’s results primarily explain this decline, as the market rebounded in March with an increase of +32.4% in volume and +4.3% in value.
The number of new vehicle registrations is trending upwards by +18.2%. The use of public car parks decreased slightly by -6%.
The Economy Bulletin put out by IMSEE presents key figures for the Monegasque economy on a quarterly basis. These figures relate to the sectors of Tourism, Real Estate, Transport, Foreign Trade, Consumption, Finance and Employment. The data for the period is based on the previous year’s same quarter.
Princess part of new global pledge to end AIDS inequalities
As the UNAIDS International Goodwill Ambassador, Princess Stephanie has addressed a high-level meeting on HIV/AIDS, titled ‘Ending inequalities and taking action to end AIDS by 2030’.
In a video message last week, Princess Stephanie called for lessons to be learned from the concomitant epidemics of HIV and Covid-19, in order to build stronger health systems. She welcomed the new UNAIDS global strategy which focuses on inequality reduction and prevention, in particular for key populations, and recalled the financial support that Monaco has been providing to the program for almost 25 years.
Princess Stephanie also spoke about her association, Fight Aids Monaco, and its commitment made in 2018 – ‘Towards Monaco without AIDS’ (Vers Monaco sans sida).
The high-level meeting of the United Nations General Assembly on HIV/AIDS ended with the adoption of a Political Declaration, an ambitious text which sets new targets to be achieved by 2025.
World leaders agreed to reduce the annual number of new HIV infections to under 370,000 and AIDS-related deaths to 250 000, eliminate new HIV infections among children, end paediatric AIDS and eliminate all forms of HIV-related discrimination by 2025. They also committed to providing life-saving HIV treatment to 34 million people by 2025.
Monaco’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations New York Isabelle Picco chaired the meeting in her capacity as Vice-President of the current General Assembly.
Solar panels have been installed on the roof of the practice studio of the Ballets de Monte-Carlo as part of the government’s efforts to be more environmentally friendly.
The Ballets de Monte-Carlo atelier has gone green. The roof of the facility is now equipped with photovoltaic panels, covering an area of 403m2 and composed of 228 separate plates. These panels will be able to generate up to 94,000kWh of electricity per year, providing up to 30% of the energy needs of the studio. This will also create a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions equalling 7.7 tonnes of Co2 each year.
The Public Buildings Maintenance Service will carry out other photovoltaic installations in the near future at select locations in the Principality.
Some of the facilities who will benefit include the Scientific Centre of Monaco, which has the largest roof area and production capacity of all the country’s public buildings, the Scouts of Monaco, the Triton as well as the École FANB – Institut François d’Assise-Nicolas Barré, which will be the first to receive the new generation of coloured modules. These have been created to blend better with the surrounding environment, giving “better visual integration” in Monaco-Ville, the area housing the facility.
The buildings that opt for solar panels are eligible for a certain amount of aid for the installation process.
A new Ministerial Order relating to this incentive measure was published on 7th June in the Official Journal of Monaco. In order to increase the production of renewable electricity, the Government decided to simplify the administrative procedure for disbursing aid and to extend the system to all energy producers.
This will allow owners to assign any third-party investor, including tenants, the ability to carry out the installation of photovoltaic panels on their buildings. Electricity produced can either be sold back to Société Monegasque de l’Electrique et du Gaz (SMEG) for cash or be used through personal consumption.
Solar panels can now be affixed not only to rooftops, but also to facades.
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