Germany will close its borders with France and two other countries including Austria and Switzerland to contain the coronavirus epidemic.
Germany will close its borders with three countries including France from Monday 16th March 2020 in full epidemic coronavirus.
Germany closes its borders with France, Austria and Switzerland because of the coronavirus. Luxembourg does not seem concerned, for the moment. As of 8:00 am tomorrow, anyone trying to return to Germany will be turned back, with exceptions, according to the German newspaper Der Spiegel .
🔴L’Allemagne va fermer ses frontières avec la France, l’Autriche et la Suisse à partir de lundi rapporte @focusonline #COVIDー19 #Coronavirus
— Guillaume Daret (@GuillaumeDaret) March 15, 2020
L’Allemagne s’y met à son tour après avoir expliqué que c’était inefficace : fermeture des frontières du pays avec la France, l’Autriche et la Suisse à partir de demain matin 8 heures
— Thomas Wieder (@ThomasWieder) March 15, 2020
Les autorités allemandes ont décidé de fermer à partir de demain matin les frontières du pays avec la France, la Suisse et l’Autriche pour tenter freiner la propagation de l’épidémie de coronavirus, a indiqué à l’AFP une source proche du dossier #AFP pic.twitter.com/ZNb8Zo2kCi
— Agence France-Presse (@afpfr) March 15, 2020
Uncertainty for cross-border workers
The free movement of goods must remain ensured and border populations will be able to continue to come and go in Germany but it is a question of containing the coronavirus and also of putting an end to the purchases in panic mode that foreign nationals come to make in Germany, posing supply problems in border regions, reports the daily Bild .
The newspaper specifies that the decision was taken during a telephone discussion between Chancellor Angela Merkel, her Federal Minister of the Interior Horst Seehofer and the ministers-presidents of border Länder like Saarland with Lorraine, Baden-Württemberg with Alsace or even Rhineland-Palatinate with both.
A few days ago, Germany had already considered the Grand Est as a risk zone like China, Iran or Italy regarding exposure to the coronavirus.