The German government is against opening hotels up for the Christmas holidays. The federal government criticised the decisions of several federal states – the Länder, to allow stays in hotels for families during the Christmas holiday season. “Citizens are being called to avoid tourist excursions,” government spokesman Steffen Seibert said, news from ARD TV.
Several prime ministers of German federal states – the federal states – announced that they would allow family stays in hotels in large cities during the Christmas period.
After North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony, Hesse, Schleswig-Holstein, Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saxony has also made a similar decision recently – even though Saxony now has the highest rate of new coronavirus infections in the country.
During the meeting of the presidium of the CDU party (Christian Democratic Union of Germany), Chancellor Angela Merkel criticised plans to open hotels in particularly affected federal states, which was reported by the dpa news agency, citing several participants of the meeting.
Why is the German government against opening hotels for Christmas?
Merkel recalled the decision of the federal government and the Länder to ease the strict restrictions on contacts during the holiday season. At the same time, she said she had no imagination to believe that countries particularly affected by the pandemic wanted to open hotels.
According to dpa Merkel, she justified her criticism by saying that it is impossible to control whether the hotels are only hosted by guests who actually visit relatives in the region.
The Health Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, Karl-Josef Laumann, did not understand the reaction of the federal government. “A family visit is not tourism,” he said, reports ARD. For him, the discussion is not very important, but it is “typically German,” he said.
Merkel will meet prime ministers of federal states on Wednesday. According to government spokesman Steffen Seibert, it should include the fight against the pandemic – but no “new decisions on this matter” should be expected.
Source: Polskiobserwator, Afronews.eu