Border, we close!
Or almost.
From this Monday at midnight, Germany will filter to the extreme any passage from the neighboring Moselle, imposing in particular a negative Covid test and absolutely imperative reasons for traveling.
Despite pressure from Paris for the widest possible coordination, Berlin ruled unilaterally, classifying the Moselle in a high-risk Covid zone.
In question, the South African variant which circulates in this department bordering on Germany.
This presence has led the German Institute for Epidemiological Watch Robert-Koch, whose opinions dictate the health policy of Chancellor Angela Merkel, to raise the alert level to the maximum vis-à-vis the French neighbor.
For several weeks now, Germany has closed its borders with the Czech Republic and Austrian Tyrol on the same criteria.
A puzzle for thousands of inhabitants
Unlike those borders, the German-French closure should not be completely hermetic.
“We do not want this,” warned Secretary of State for European Affairs Clément Beaune, aware of the trauma created in the Grand Est by the brutal closures at the start of the pandemic a year ago.
On both sides, the regions are overlapping, forming basins of life, 16,000 inhabitants of Moselle crossing the border every day to go to work in the Länder (regions) neighboring Saar and Rhineland-Palatinate, not counting the va- back and forth for shopping, walking, etc.
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Thus, a number of caregivers from hospitals in Sarrebourg and its region live on the French side.
“Cross-border workers already lead a crazy life to be able to return home before the curfew at 6 p.m., in traffic jams, so you can imagine if they are also asked to take a Covid test every day!
»The LR mayor of Metz (Moselle), François Grosdidier, was carried away on Franceinfo.
In the evening, Clément Beaune congratulated himself on having avoided the total closure and obtained the authorization of antigenic tests, faster than the PCRs, obligatory not every day but every 48 hours.
In addition, we will not see the reappearance of the customs barriers of last spring: checks will indeed be carried out randomly, upstream of border posts or in the companies themselves.
However, local elected officials are less reassured.
"While we had been discussing for ten days with good hope of reaching an agreement, Germany suddenly applied the harshest rule to us, with mandatory electronic declarations on entry into its territory, loses his temper Christophe Arend, LREM deputy de Forbach (Moselle) and co-president of the bureau of the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly.
As for the tests, I very much doubt that the Moselle has the means to provide enough to cross-border workers, at this 48-hour rate.
"
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More seriously, he fears that the German authorities, "quickly overwhelmed by random checks, purely and simply close a good part of the 37 crossing points between Moselle and Germany".
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Covid-19: this "third wave" which worries in Central Europe
Another embarrassing question for the government asked by elected officials: why more stringent health measures locally, such as the confinement demanded by the mayor of Metz, were they not applied to the Moselle?
"This could have avoided the German shutdown", enraged those concerned.
But there is another dissatisfied: Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who bitterly denounces this difference in treatment.
Once again, Europe seems overwhelmed by the health crisis.