Germany tightens the conditions for French access to its territory

Getting to Germany from France will become more difficult. From Sunday March 28, travelers must be provided with a negative test – PCR or antigen – forty-eight hours. They will also be subject to a ten-day quarantine, which may be lifted after the fifth if a second negative test is presented.

This decision was expected. It is the consequence of the classification of France as “High risk area” by the Robert-Koch German Health Institute, announced Friday March 26. To this category belong the countries which, for ten successive days, display an incidence rate greater than 200 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. In France, on Friday, it was 337 (120 in Germany).

Read also Covid-19: Germany classifies France as a “high-risk zone”, synonymous with border restrictions

Until now, France was regarded by Germany as a simple ” risk area “. The entry conditions across the Rhine were therefore less drastic: travelers with a negative test on their arrival in Germany could be exempted from quarantine in most of the Länder. As for those who did not have one, they could still enter as long as they went into solitary confinement and were tested within ten days of their arrival if the authorities so demanded. Which, in practice, was very rare.

Regarding cross-border workers, the situation should not fundamentally change, in particular for the inhabitants of the Moselle, whose department is already classified. “Variant circulation zone”, since early March, by the Robert-Koch Institute. The 16,000 workers and 2,000 Moselle students going to Germany each day must therefore take a forty-eight hour test, in practice two or three per week. For cross-border workers coming from the Alsatian departments, only two negative tests per week should be sufficient, and they could be carried out on the German side, explained, Friday evening, the authorities of the border Land of Baden-Württemberg.

A “balance to be found”

In the United Kingdom, too, pressure is mounting very strongly on the Johnson government to further tighten the terms of crossing sea and air borders with France. For people arriving in the country, residents or not, the rule is already very restrictive: they must have a negative test and must isolate themselves at home for ten days. Across the Channel, the epidemic has declined significantly thanks to the containment in force since the end of December 2020 and the vaccination campaign (29 million people have already received their first dose). But experts are worried about the number of cases of Brazilian and South African variants circulating in France, and the Labor opposition is calling for measures.

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