The threat had been hovering for a few hours.
This Thursday evening, Angela Merkel decided: Germany will classify France in a high-risk zone in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, thus resulting in numerous traffic restrictions.
This ranges from the requirement to present a negative test on entry into German territory, to quarantine in Germany for 10 days, or even to the imposition of strict border controls.
Such traffic controls have been put in place by Germany most recently with Poland and before that with the Czech Republic and the Austrian Tyrol.
"When looking at the incidence rates it is quite simply a necessity (...) a practically automatic process", declared the German Chancellor at a press conference in Berlin within the framework of a EU videoconference summit dedicated to the fight against Covid-19.
The Chancellor clarified that it was not "a political decision", but a simple observation of the incidence rate: "when this rate, as is the case here, exceeds the threshold for a long time of the 200, then this results in a classification in a high risk zone ”.
The incidence rates, which measure the number of positive cases per 100,000 inhabitants over the last seven days, in many French departments exceed this threshold of 200, while in Germany, it stood at 113.3 on Thursday. on a national average.
And it is exploding in Ile-de-France, where it now exceeds 600 infections per 100,000 inhabitants.
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France could benefit from preferential treatment
This decision should take place on Friday and be announced by the national health watch institute RKI, according to the daily FAZ.
So far, only the Moselle department, which borders the German regions of Saarland and Rhineland-Palatinate, has been classified by Germany as a high-risk zone.
On the other hand, in this specific case, the two countries agreed on a more flexible system of random checks and antigenic tests on frontier workers.
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"Being tested every two days, it swells me": in Moselle, border workers facing the Covid
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In Moselle, the health puzzle of border workers
Angela Merkel suggested that France could benefit from this preferential treatment, and avoid strict border controls, if its territory is well classified as a risk zone in its entirety.
"There is a whole specific test procedure (...) which is being discussed with France," she said.
The French Secretary of State for European Affairs, Clément Beaune, "is negotiating the easing of the terms (of such a decision) to avoid the border being closed", we also learned Thursday evening in his entourage in Paris .
Concern grows over hardening in sight
Concern on both sides of the border is growing nonetheless.
French and German deputies asked at the same time Thursday to "convene as quickly as possible (...) an extraordinary meeting of the Franco-German committee for cross-border cooperation" in the face of the tightening in view of "restrictive rules in the living areas border crossings between France and Germany ”.
France is experiencing a third wave of Covid-19, linked to a rapid spread of variants.
French Prime Minister Jean Castex called on Thursday to "stick together more than ever" in the face of this "extremely strong" third wave, citing an "extremely worrying" situation, especially in Île-de-France.