Disappointed to angry: This is how the hospitality industry reacts to the further tightening of the corona measures.

Ingrid Hartges, General Manager of the German Hotel and Restaurant Association (Dehoga), said that people who had been vaccinated twice in the restaurant should also submit a test in the future.

The approximately 35 million boosted people are exempt from the test requirement.

But 25 million people have so far "only" been vaccinated twice.

The fear of restaurateurs: Many of them will not queue up for a visit to the café or pizzeria in a test center.

Corinna Budras

Business correspondent in Berlin.

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Julia Löhr

Business correspondent in Berlin.

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As early as December, sales across the industry were around 50 percent lower than in the pre-crisis year 2019, the association has just calculated. In several federal states, “2 G plus” has already applied in the past few weeks, in other places 2 G with a curfew. Now the industry fears another damper. Berlin's governing mayor Franziska Giffey (SPD) has little understanding for the criticism. “You always have to see: the alternative is complete closure. And the restaurant association definitely doesn't want that either. "

What worries the restaurateurs in particular: “In November the federal and state governments decided that the hospitalization rate should be the decisive criterion.

There is no longer any question of that, ”said Hartges.

“In a number of federal states, the hospitalization incidence is below 3, so according to the resolutions of that time, there should actually be simplifications instead of tightening 6 then 2 G plus.

"We have always said: the measures must be proportionate and practicable," said Hartges.

"But that is less and less the case."

"Help not enough"

The Dehoga considers the expansion of the aid programs planned by the federal and state governments to be inadequate. Entrepreneurs have been able to apply for Bridging Aid IV since Friday. In the small print it is regulated that the personnel costs for access controls are eligible hygiene measures. Depending on the size of the decline in sales, the companies are reimbursed between 40 and 90 percent of their fixed costs. The federal government expects that up to 100,000 companies could apply for the aid. But Hartges says: "The help is not sufficient, especially for larger companies." City hotels and event restaurateurs would hardly have been able to generate any turnover even in summer - and currently hardly any prospects.

In such situations, courts have often tried to clarify the legality of the rules. But lawyers dampen the hope that judges will create new facts this time, as they have done so many times in the past. On the one hand, the step-by-step plan with the agreed hospitalization rate was only a non-binding agreement between the federal government and the states and nothing that restaurateurs can now refer to in a binding manner, says the Berlin business lawyer Albrecht Döring. He works in the Härting law firm, which has already led many legal proceedings against corona measures in the past. Döring is also chairman of the professional association Bars of Berlin eV and can therefore understand the concerns of the branch.In addition, few courts have recently opposed policy decisions.

The Federal Constitutional Court in particular has given the legislature a wide margin of discretion in combating the pandemic.

Most recently, the Higher Administrative Court in Lower Saxony caused a sensation when it overruled the 2-G rule for retail because it was not necessary.

However, other courts, including those in Berlin, have upheld the restrictions.