.jpg "restricted crossings at the Franco-German border in Moselle")
Published on : Modified :
–
Germany will strengthen its border controls with France, after having decided to classify the Moselle as a maximum risk zone from Monday evening due to the circulation of Covid-19 variants. A negative test of less than 48 hours will be mandatory from Tuesday for cross-border workers.
The French Secretary of State for European Affairs, Clément Beaune, confirmed, Sunday February 28 on France Inter, that Berlin had informed Paris of its intention to classify the Moselle from Monday evening as a maximum risk zone due to Covid-19.
Germany will restrict crossings at its border from France, but renounce a virtual closure as with the Czech Republic and Austria.
“The French department of Moselle will be considered from March 2 at (midnight) as an area affected by the variants” of the coronavirus, the highest category in the risk scale in Germany for Covid-19, which has it three, the health ministry said.
As a result, from that date, people entering German territory “will have to present a negative PCR or antigen test”, he added. The prefecture said, Sunday at the end of the day, that a test of less than 48 hours will be mandatory from Tuesday for border workers.
“The border will not be closed”
One thing is certain: Germany does not intend to introduce systematic customs controls at its border with the Moselle, unlike what it did in spring 2020 at the start of the pandemic at the French border. , which had created tensions with Paris and between the local populations. Contrary also to what Berlin already implemented in February with the Czech Republic and the Austrian Tyrol.
“The border will not be closed,” a spokesperson for the Ministry of the Interior told AFP on Sunday, in particular because the German regions bordering the Moselle, the Saar and Rhineland-Palatinate, did not have it. asked, but also because the regional authorities on both sides of the border “cooperate closely” on this issue.
Police checks must be random and within German territory in the border area, he said. France will therefore benefit from a form of preferential treatment.
Because the transition from a region into a variant zone “is a classification which normally implies – this is what Germany has done with regard to Austria or the Czech Republic – extremely strict measures of almost -closure of borders, “said Clément Beaune on France Inter.
Preferential treatment criticized by Austria
“We don’t want that” for the 16,000 border workers in Moselle, he said, adding that he was in discussions with Berlin to “try to mitigate these measures as much as possible”. He therefore suggested tests “which are not compulsory every day but every two or three days”.
The controls put in place by Germany with the Czech Republic and the Austrian region of Tyrol were for the same reasons as the Moselle: the fear of a new wave of Covid-19 contamination linked to variants of the virus, this has aroused criticism in Austria in particular but also from the European Union.
The European Commission, for its part, was moved to see free movement within the EU thus called into question.
At the border with the Moselle, “we must set an example and return to a lighter device”, argued Clément Beaune, arguing of a “cooperative Franco-German spirit” to “avoid returning to what we lived painfully “at the start of the pandemic.
This preferential treatment has already drawn negative comments from Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. “There are in Germany, depending on the geographical directions, differences in rigor in terms of border rules,” he regretted this weekend in an interview with the German daily Merkur.
“It is entirely appropriate in times of pandemic to lay a safety net with tests, masks, etc. But in my opinion this is not the case for measures which endanger the internal (European) market , which implies that people cannot go to their places of work or that families are separated, ”he said.
With AFP
– .
