Kurz and Söder want to keep the borders open



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Bad Reichenhall / Brussels. Austria and Bavaria want to keep the borders open despite growing Covid 19 infections. Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP) said after a meeting with Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) on Friday in Bad Reichenhall that it was “very , very important “to him that the borders between Bavaria and Austria remain open.

Cross-border travelers must be able to continue driving across national borders and working. “That’s very important,” Kurz explained. He appealed to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany’s highest federal authority for infectious diseases, to issue travel advisories for risk areas as differentiated as possible.

Cities are often affected by major outbreaks, but rural areas are not, Kurz said. “Many of our tourist regions have little or no corona cases,” the chancellor said. The RKI includes Vienna and, with the exception of individual municipalities, the federal states of Vorarlberg and Tyrol in its list of risk areas. Qualifying can hit Vorarlberg and Tirol hard in the winter season.

Bavaria expands list of German risk areas

Prime Minister Söder said border traffic should continue to pass sensibly. You are relying heavily on rapid tests in the coming weeks and months because so much can be accomplished with them.

Meanwhile, Bavaria has expanded the number of risk areas in the interior of Germany to ten cities and districts. From Saturday, people from Berlin, Bremen, Frankfurt am Main, Offenbach, Hamm, Herne, Remscheid, as well as the districts of Esslingen, Cloppenburg and Wesermarsch will be banned from staying in Bavaria. Vacationers from these places can only be accommodated in Bavaria with a negative test that is no more than 48 hours old.

Meanwhile, EU ambassadors in Brussels on Friday negotiated a deal for the introduction of EU-wide travel rules to contain the corona pandemic.

On Tuesday, the document, which is expected to be formulated as a recommendation, could be adopted by the Council of European Ministers in Luxembourg, in which EU Minister Karoline Edtstadler (ÖVP) will also participate. As can be seen from a compromise proposal from the German Presidency of the Council of the EU, countries could agree on criteria for a type of crown traffic light, that is, a common map in which regions are highlighted in color according to the rate of infection.

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