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Seehofer for air traffic restriction – Merkel speaks of “precautions at the border”
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Tighter controls on flights from high-risk areas
Tighter police controls on flights from high-risk areas have now come into effect. This includes countries like the United States, Egypt, and Spain. If you want to enter Germany from these countries, you should pay attention to the following.
Mutations of the virus are forcing the federal government “to examine drastic measures as well,” says Interior Minister Horst Seehofer. Suggests further restricting reduced air traffic. The Federal Chancellor addresses the external borders in a union meeting.
secondand Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) wants to massively restrict air traffic to Germany to combat the crown pandemic and also introduce stricter border controls. “The threat posed by the numerous mutations of the virus demands that we also examine drastic measures and discuss them in the federal government,” Seehofer said in the “Bild” on Tuesday.
“This includes much stricter border controls, especially at borders with high-risk areas, but also reducing air traffic to Germany to almost zero, as Israel is currently doing to prevent the introduction of the virus mutation,” said the Minister. People in Germany hoped “that we protect them as best as possible from an explosion in the number of infections.”
Chancellor Angela Merkel also addressed possible travel restrictions at the Union parliamentary group meeting on Tuesday. According to the participants’ reports, the Chancellor wants to further restrict tourist travel. “Everyone sees that it is not the time when we are traveling now,” Merkel said, according to the participants.
At the parliamentary group meeting, Merkel expressed her lack of understanding of ongoing cross-border travel. “We ask a lot of citizens,” said the chancellor according to the participants. For their part, citizens could therefore hope that they would be protected “with certain precautions at the border.” According to information from “Bild”, Merkel had made a similar statement the day before in an internal videoconference with the leaders of the Union’s parliamentary groups at the federal and state level.
During checks at Frankfurt airport, for example, the police recently found more than 100 violations of Corona’s entry regulations. For example, the required entry record or proof of corona negative tests was missing, as announced by federal police. A total of more than 4,000 passengers from Corona hotspots were screened Sunday and Monday, nearly 130 of them violating entry regulations.
Air traffic 67 percent below the level of the previous year
The Federal Association of the German Aviation Industry initially declined to comment on the Berlin news. “We are not commenting on this at this time,” said a spokesman for the association that brings together German airlines, airports and air traffic control at the request of WELT. The aviation industry is already in its biggest crisis and after the massive crash in 2020 with travel restrictions, I was hoping for slightly better capacity utilization again.
In a Eurocontrol air traffic control presentation, it was recently noted that air traffic within Europe is currently 67 percent below the previous year’s level. In mid-January, there were an average of just 416 arrivals and departures per day at Germany’s largest airport in Frankfurt, a 67 percent decrease compared to the previous year.
Lufthansa, for example, only handled 204 flights on January 20, a decrease of 86 percent. Lufthansa boss Carsten Spohr recently admitted that less than twenty percent of flight capabilities were operational in the first quarter. However, he firmly assumes that there will be a rebound again in the summer with more vaccines and corona tests. Lufthansa has already cut 29,000 jobs during the crisis.
The open criticism comes from the German travel association. Tourist travel has already been almost completely paralyzed due to the restrictions of the pandemic. The business travel sector has also declined. “The federal government should also take note of this. Therefore, it should not focus on further restricting our already severely restricted freedom to travel, ”the DRV demanded.
Rather, the government should remedy the “dramatic deficits” in vaccination and present reasonable proof concepts. “Furthermore, in the public debate, the Federal Government should urgently remember that freedom to travel is a fundamental right, not a privilege to be granted politically.”
