Germany on Friday March 26 classified the whole of France, including the overseas territories, as an area at "
high risk
" of infection with Covid-19, announced the national health institute Robert Koch.
Read also: The health crisis turns into a political crisis in Germany
This classification implies in particular at least random border controls, which most travelers from France observe a period of quarantine on arrival and have a negative test of less than 48 hours.
The border department of Moselle was so far the only French territory to be classified by neighboring Germany as a “
high risk
” area due to a high circulation of Covid-19 variants.
Angela Merkel announced Thursday evening that Germany was preparing to classify France in a "
high risk
"
zone
.
"
When we look at the incidence rates it is quite simply a necessity (...) a practically automatic process
," the German Chancellor said at a press conference in Berlin.
The incidence rates, which measure the number of infections per 100,000 inhabitants over the last seven days, in many French departments exceed the threshold of 200. It stood on Friday in Germany at around 119 on a national average.
Random border testing checks
As the Chancellor had suggested, border test controls will be random and not strict as Germany has recently done with Poland and before that with the Czech Republic and Austrian Tyrol, a government source confirmed. German.
The French Secretary of State for European Affairs, Clément Beaune, who spoke on Friday with the elected officials concerned, was pleased to have been able to obtain some relief.
"
The discussions carried out relentlessly with the German authorities, in particular the presidents of the border Länder and my German counterpart, have made it possible to mitigate the consequences of this classification with the priority of preserving the daily and professional life of French border workers
", he said. he told AFP.
"
We avoided a clear border closure
", was summed up in those around him.
In Alsace, cross-border workers and students will only have to carry out "
a bi-weekly test, at their place of work or study
", and not to present a test of less than 48 hours at each passage to the border, we said from the same source.
