Coronavirus: Germany’s Angela Merkel apologises for Easter lockdown U-turn
- ‘I know that this entire process will trigger additional uncertainty. I deeply regret this and I ask all citizens for their forgiveness,’ said Merkel
- Merkel said the decision to tighten an existing lockdown over the Easter period would have been too difficult to enforce from a legal and logistical standpoint.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday suddenly scrapped plans for a stricter national lockdown over Easter, saying the decision – reached after hours of negotiations with state leaders – was a “mistake”.
“The idea of an Easter shutdown was conceived with the best of intentions, because we absolutely have to slow down and reverse the third wave of the pandemic. Nevertheless, the idea of the so-called ‘Easter rest’ was a mistake,” she told journalists.
“I know that this entire process will trigger additional uncertainty. I deeply regret this and I ask all citizens for their forgiveness,” she said.
In the end it is better to clear it up now if it is not legally viable
Merkel explained that Monday’s decision to tighten an existing lockdown over the Easter period would have been too difficult to enforce from a legal and logistical standpoint.
The plan had included shutting down or vastly limiting business activities on April 1 and 3 – a Thursday and a Saturday.
It triggered an enormous backlash, not only from industry and business leaders, who said they had been left in the dark as to what the Easter closures meant in practice, but also from experts, who argued it was not tough enough to prevent the exponential rise of infections.
Some also said that access to food and essential goods could not be guaranteed under the plan.
“Far too many questions, from the continued payment of wages due to the lost working hours, to the situation in the shops and factories, have shown that the plan cannot be implemented, at least not in such a short time,” Merkel said.
It was initially unclear whether there was an alternative plan in place to contain a severe third wave of infections, but Merkel later clarified that the default plan was the full implementation of an “emergency brake” to suspend all planned reopenings.
Merkel and her grand coalition – made up of the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) – have come under severe criticism over what was perceived as a bungled coronavirus containment strategy.
The country’s slow vaccine roll-out has added fuel to the debate.
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Several politicians and some of the country’s 16 state leaders praised Merkel for taking responsibility for the mistake.
“In the end it is better to clear it up now if it is not legally viable,” Markus Soeder, the powerful premier of the southern state of Bavaria, was cited as saying.
German authorities reported 15,813 new coronavirus infections on Wednesday, with the death toll rising by 248 to reach 75,212.
The number of new infections per 100,000 residents over a seven-day period – a key metric in the pandemic – rose to 108.1 on Wednesday.
