Court overturns Corona hotspot rule: AfD had sued

Created: 04/22/2022Updated: 04/22/2022, 20:21

A passerby carries an FFP2 mask in his hand.

© Boris Roessler/dpa/symbol image

The controversial hotspot regulation in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania was overturned by a court a few days before it expired.

This means that central protective measures are no longer needed.

Greifswald - shopping without a mask and full cinemas - according to a decision by the higher administrative court in Greifswald, this is now possible again in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

On Friday, the court overturned the hotspot rule passed by the state parliament in March, which was to apply until April 27th.

The AfD parliamentary group had filed a complaint against the parliamentary decision.

Health Minister Stefanie Drese (SPD) said in the evening that the court decision would be accepted.

The court granted an application for temporary legal protection by the AfD on important points.

According to the OVG, the protective measures that have been suspended relate in particular to the distance requirement and the obligation to wear a medical mask or respiratory mask.

The state government had already largely lifted the 3G rule (vaccinated, recovered, tested) on Maundy Thursday - the hospitality and cultural industries had previously put pressure on it.

According to the court, the mask requirement does not apply in retail, at weekly markets and in wholesale, in physical services, in leisure activities and in gastronomy.

The distance requirement in publicly accessible interiors has also been overturned.

This means that cinemas and theaters can again use the full capacity of their halls.

So far, they have had to seat visitors in what is known as a chessboard pattern, which meant that a significant proportion of the seats were not available.

The court also rejected the option models that providers could use to circumvent the distance rule if they instead imposed testing obligations.

The OVG's decision is final.

According to the Ministry of Health, however, the mask requirement for events, cultural offers, trade fairs or accommodation has not been lifted.

Minister Drese explained that the 3G requirement when unvaccinated people arrive at the hotel also applies, as does the 2Gplus obligation in clubs and discos.

In the schools, on the other hand, the mask requirement in the building will fall on Monday, as Minister of Education Simone Oldenburg (left) announced.

On March 24, the state parliament in Schwerin declared the entire federal state a corona hotspot in order to be able to continue the protective measures in force across the board.

The judges believe that this violates federal law.

According to the court, a particularly high number of new corona infections and an impending overload of hospital capacities should have been determined individually for each district and city in order to declare them a hotspot.

The judges complained that this did not happen.

Without the decision of the state parliament, most of the protective measures in accordance with the Federal Infection Protection Act would have expired at the beginning of April - that was also the case in most federal states.

Only Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Hamburg declared themselves completely corona hotspots.

The AfD parliamentary group described the decision of the higher administrative court as a defeat for Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig (SPD).

"A big success!

The Corona hotspot regulation is illegal.

Another setback for the state government and Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig," said parliamentary group leader Nikolaus Kramer.

He spoke of a “ban delusion” by the state government.

The health policy spokeswoman for the opposition CDU parliamentary group, Katy Hoffmeister, accused the red-red state government of having misused the hotspot regulation.

"That's for sure now," she said.

"The notion that the end justifies the means is unworthy of a democratically elected government."

The German Hotel and Restaurant Association (Dehoga) was not surprised by the court decision.

"When the hotspot rule was introduced, we criticized exactly that: that this state of emergency can only be regional and not for the entire state," said association leader Lars Schwarz.

In addition, precise parameters should have been defined as to the number of infections and the hospital burden from which a region is a corona hotspot.

He assumes that people will continue to be reasonable, said the Dehoga boss.

This was also shown by the other federal states, in which protective measures such as 3G and the obligation to wear masks were largely eliminated at the beginning of April.

"We're not through the pandemic yet," emphasized Schwarz.

However, the decision of the Higher Administrative Court in Greifswald means that Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania now has the same rules as all other federal states except Hamburg.

According to a spokesman, Bavaria's Health Minister Klaus Holetschek (CSU) rated the legal exit from the hotspot regulation in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania as a defeat for Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD).

The court's decision shows that the federal government has given the states an unsuitable tool.

“It was right that we didn’t declare Bavaria a hotspot overall.” The federal regulation was extremely poorly made.

"The spongy and useless formulations cannot be implemented with legal certainty."

more on the subject

Corona: Higher Administrative Court overturns hotspot regulation in MV

Holetschek sees Bavaria's course confirmed by the hotspot regulation

Mask requirement in MV tilted: Hospitality welcomes OVG verdict

The board member of the German Foundation for Patient Protection, Eugen Brysch, said that Lauterbach could now see that such a "soft law" could not help to ensure good basic protection.

dpa