The French President is under fire for a particular choice of words.

Currently, roughly 5 million French citizens have not received any dose of an approved COVID-19 vaccine. While several countries in the European Union have been drafting legislation to mandate vaccination, either entirely or in certain groups, France’s approach has been more to drastically limit the movements of those who haven’t been vaccinated.

In an interview with French newspaper Le Parisien, French President Emmanuel Macron summed up his position with a potentially poor choice of words: “I really want to piss them off, and we’ll carry on doing this – to the end.”

Macron added that while France would not “vaccinate by force,” the general idea to coerce the unvaccinated is “limiting as much as possible their access to activities in social life.”

“I won’t send [unvaccinated people] to prison,” he said. “So we need to tell them, from 15 January, you will no longer be able to go to the restaurant. You will no longer be able to go for a coffee, you will no longer be able to go to the theatre. You will no longer be able to go to the cinema.”

Macron’s statement swiftly drew condemnation from conservative MPs, several of whom halted Tuesday’s National Assembly meeting to decry his words as “unworthy, irresponsible and premeditated.”

Several conservative Presidential candidates also chimed in to chastise Macron. “You have to accept them as they are – lead them, bring them together and not insult them,” said candidate Valérie Pécresse.

“A president shouldn’t say that… Emmanuel Macron is unworthy of his office,” tweeted candidate Marine Le Pen.

At time of writing, France has one of the highest COVID vaccination rates in the entire EU, with over 90% of the population having received two shots of an approved vaccine.