Franck Dattée is discovering how hard it is to keep his business going in the midst of a pandemic, however often the French government urges employers and workers to keep the economy moving.
“At the moment almost all our customers have decided to close their building sites,” says Mr Dattée, who normally has 50 employees doing electrical work for construction and providing security systems.
Unlike Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte, who decided to close all non-essential businesses at the weekend to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus, the French government has repeatedly called on companies to stay open and on workers to show up for their jobs even if they are not in essential services such as food supply.