The order that Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer (CSU) received from the Federal Chancellery a few days ago was explosive. Because it affects millions of commuters and travelers. Chancellor Angela Merkel and Chancellor Helge Braun (CDU) asked Scheuer at the beginning of the week to work out stricter travel rules for Germans. The goal: only vaccinated, convalescent or tested people should be allowed to board long-distance trains or domestic German flights. This would have unpleasant consequences for the unvaccinated. From mid-October on, corona rapid tests should no longer be free. Travel could then become more complicated and expensive for them.
The plan is a radical departure from previous practice. It is true that train and air travelers already have to wear masks today. Vaccination passports or corona tests are not yet mandatory. While restaurant visits indoors are already only possible to test, vaccinate or recover, anyone who wants to can board the often full trains or flights within Germany. Health politicians have long considered this to be wrong and recently increased the pressure. “Long train journeys, for example in the compartment, can lead to infection with the Delta variant,” warned the SPD health politician Karl Lauterbach just a few days ago. “Unvaccinated infected people can endanger even vaccinated people.”
The U-turn from the Chancellery makes it clear how great the government’s fear of a new corona wave is despite widespread vaccinations. “The number of cases is rising sharply,” warned government spokesman Steffen Seibert on Friday. Children cannot protect themselves because there is no vaccination for them. “We have to check what we can do to protect them,” said Seibert, pointing out that in France a test requirement for long-distance travel by rail has already been introduced. Tests have long been common on international flights in Germany as well. Children are said to be excluded from the federal government’s plans. The government also made it clear that the 3G rules should only apply to long-distance, but not to local traffic.
Despite the high number of infections, however, the government threatens to dispute about the project. Above all in the responsible Ministry of Transport, skepticism prevails. Strictly speaking, all boarded passengers should be checked at every train station, no matter how large, before departure, according to the Scheuer department. Otherwise untested people would ride along for the time being. But that is impossible with the short holding times. The official reaction from Scheuer’s department to the Chancellor’s audit assignment does not exactly reflect enthusiasm. The test will now be “processed”, said a spokesman. How long this will take is open.
The EVG trade union considers 3G controls by train staff to be “unacceptable”
One of the open questions is who should actually control the passengers. The introduction of the 3G regulation in long-distance traffic should not be carried out on the back of the train crew, warned Kristian Loroch, chairman of the largest rail union EVG, on Friday. The railway wants to reduce the staff in trains, “which will lead to an increased burden for the employees anyway”. In addition, the number of attacks on employees has increased massively. “A 3G control would exacerbate this situation and is therefore unsustainable for us.”
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The group itself does not reject such controls. But he expects them to be carried out by the federal police, say insiders. Officially, the group did not comment on the plans on Friday imageNewspaper had reported.
The industry association for public transport in Germany, on the other hand, becomes very clear in a fire letter. Oliver Wolff, chief executive of the transport company, warns urgently that the “implementation” of the plans “is practically not possible”. Wolff had the paper that the Süddeutsche Zeitung is available, addressed to Scheuer, Health Minister Jens Spahn, parliamentary group leaders and important politicians in the Bundestag. The stopping times would be “extended to such an extent that timetables and connections can no longer be kept under any circumstances,” says Wolff. The industry also refers to several studies that would not have revealed an increased risk of infection in local or long-distance transport. However, these were carried out before the particularly infectious delta variant was spread.