Covid-19: European skiing in disarray

Two employees monitor the closed Zugspitze ski resort in the Bavarian Alps on November 30, 2020. Ski areas are prepared, but skiing is not allowed in the area.

AP - Angelika Warmuth

Text by: RFI Follow

2 min

In France, will the ski lifts of ski resorts remain closed at Christmas?

Finally, it is the Council of State which will decide, it was seized this Wednesday of the question.

Elsewhere in Europe, positions are very diverse, Germany, which demanded a common EU rule, has not been heard, the countries are acting in dispersed order according to local health situations and economic imperatives.

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Spend Christmas or New Year on the peaks of the Alps or the Pyrenees?

A dream after confinement, but above all a puzzle for Europeans, Covid requires.

In France, you can stay at a hotel in a winter sports resort: toboggan shopping and snowshoeing remain on the program, but downhill skiing is out of the question, the hospitals are already full, the authorities want to avoid broken legs.

And to get rid of the desire to cross the border to ski in Switzerland for example, President Macron himself has announced “

 ”

measures

. 

► To read also: Skiing in the time of the Covid-19 is possible provided you live in Switzerland

For Austria, the main ski destination in Europe, it was unthinkable not to open the ski lifts, but the hotels on the other hand will remain closed, a fair play gesture vis-à-vis in particular the German neighbor who does not budge to avoid an extension of the pandemic the ski areas must remain closed.

In Italy and Spain the question is not yet settled. 

One thing is certain, professionals are worried, the end-of-year celebrations sometimes represent a quarter of the annual income of mountain resorts and villages. 

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• Coronavirus

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