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Frankfurt / Wiesbaden (dpa / lhe) - The Hessian trade association warns of the consequences of renewed state-ordered business closings due to the corona pandemic.
"A renewed lockdown of the non-food trade would have fatal consequences for the survival of many small and medium-sized trading companies and endanger thousands of jobs," said President Jochen Ruths on Friday.
If you close shops between Christmas and New Year that did not sell any groceries, you could lose sales of up to one billion euros per day across Germany.
The Hessen Trade Association calls for state aid programs in the event of a lockdown.
The same conditions should apply for December as for the catering trade, which has been in partial lockdown since the beginning of November.
Since many trading companies are already at a turnover level well below 50 percent of the previous year's level, short-term partial payments of the aid must be made.
The financial situation at many companies is very tense, customer frequency and sales in the city centers have been well below the previous year's level for weeks.
At the same time, the association praised the prudence of Prime Minister Volker Bouffier (CDU) and the possibility of combating rising corona infection numbers in Hesse in a regionally limited manner.
"In the current situation, the Hessian state government has taken sensible measures to continue to counteract the infection process more intensively," said Ruths.
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Bouffier said on Friday that the weekend before or the weekend after the Christmas holidays could start a hard lockdown.
He initially considers a deadline of 10 January to be the correct period.
The English term lockdown means curfew, shutdown is understood to mean the closure or shutdown of businesses or shops.
In the Corona crisis, both terms are often used in the German language for serious restrictions on social or economic life.