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Stefan Genth is usually an extremely matter-of-fact person.
On Thursday morning, however, the head of the German Retail Association (HDE) clearly had trouble curbing his emotions.
"It is difficult for me to enter a normal press conference against the background of the government declaration," he confessed: "We are more than disappointed."
The outrage about the resolutions of the Corona summit was simply too great, the consequences of which will be dramatic according to the HDE.
Due to the closure, retailers lose sales of around 700 million euros per day of sale.
Genth spoke of a clear breach of word in politics.
The promise of a concept for a safe and fair way to reopen the shops was frivolously broken.
“This is not an opening strategy, this is a closing strategy,” he complained.
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Many retailers put the development in a hopeless situation.
More than half of the businesses affected by the lockdown - practically all of them apart from e-commerce and supermarkets - would not survive the current year if the aid is not improved quickly and significantly.
Genth called the fact that bridging aid can only be applied for from Thursday, “a farce and an unbelievable”.
Further adjustments are already essential.
He described the new incidence number of 35, which the Corona summit set as the basis for reopening the shops, as "arbitrary and unworldly", this was "a development that I could never have imagined in Germany".
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A scientific basis for this cannot be identified.
For retailers, this means that there is still no clear perspective as to whether and when they will be able to receive customers again.
Genth revised an earlier forecast by the trade association, according to which up to 50,000 stores would be facing the end of the month-long closings.
According to the new resolutions, this is now the lower limit of the acute threat to existence.
“There could be a lot more,” he fears.
A quarter of a million jobs are at stake.
A total of around 200,000 businesses have been affected by the closings since mid-November.
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Understanding of the tough government measures among traders is dwindling, also in the face of unequal treatment of the industries.
“I allow every hairdresser to open.
But where is the difference when I sit at the hairdresser's for two hours or do my shopping for 15 minutes? ”Asked the top representative of the dealers rhetorically.
For the hairdressers, the federal and state governments had promised March 1 as the reopening date.
While politicians are not doing their homework when it comes to vaccination and test strategies, retailers have long since presented functioning hygiene concepts that enable safe shopping even in times of pandemic.
Practice shows this.
“With unlimited shopping in supermarkets, there have been no contagion hotspots so far - even though 40 million of the 50 million annual customer contacts in stationary retail were in the grocery trade alone.
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"Many traders no longer know what to do next," complained Genth: "The situation is often hopeless: No planning security at all, no light at the end of the tunnel and still inadequate government support." The traders are "caught in lockdown and the Politicians accept this ”.