This complicates the lives of 16,000 French border workers: since Tuesday, the inhabitants of Moselle wanting to go to Germany must present a negative test for Covid-19 dating back 48 hours ...

Clément Beaune to RFI: in Moselle, “emotion must not turn into anger or hatred”

The French Secretary of State for European Affairs, Clément Beaune, went this Thursday to Sarreguemines, a border town straddling the two countries, to visit an emergency test center (illustrative image).

Ludovic MARIN / AFP

Text by: Anthony Lattier Follow

5 mins

This complicates the lives of 16,000 French border workers: since Tuesday, the inhabitants of Moselle wanting to go to Germany must present a negative test for Covid-19 dating back 48 hours maximum.

Germany imposed this turn of the screw by evoking the increased circulation of variants in the department.

The French Secretary of State for European Affairs, Clément Beaune, went to Sarreguemines, a border town, on Thursday to visit an emergency test center.

He assures RFI of working to “lift the constraints as quickly as possible”.

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From our special correspondent in Sarreguemines,

RFI: “Europe, we made it.

We can't undo it like that!

This is what a resident of Sarreguemines who is angry with the restrictive measures put in place by Germany told RFI.

Is this situation a failure for Europe?

Clément Beaune

: The situation is difficult and we are trying to manage it as well as possible.

There is a lot of emotion because here Franco-German life is everyday, it is not theoretical.

Sometimes it is having your child in a school 500 meters away but which is on the other side of the border.

It's working every day across the border.

It is a painful situation.

I do not want to believe that it is a failure because a failure means that we think that there are no solutions.

However, in the short term, we are trying to limit the impact of these measures.

Six antigen testing centers will be open by Sunday (open including weekends) so that several thousand tests can be performed.

So we are looking for solutions so that these rules of tests every 48 hours are the least restrictive possible.

And then we try especially that this constraint lasts as short as possible.

We are continuing our discussions with Germany.

Some French people are annoyed to see that these restrictive measures to cross the German border are not reciprocal.

Will France in turn make it compulsory to obtain a test to enter its territory?

At the moment we haven't.

Why ?

Because the subject is not a question of nationality, it is a question of the territory from which one comes.

I am very concrete: if in the morning we go from Moselle (France) to Saar (Germany) and when returning in the evening we have the same checks carried out by the French authorities when we return home, we are subject to a double penalty since we are checked twice!

When we say reciprocity, that means more checks for our Moselle workers who are already in a difficult situation and we don't want this to continue for too long.

So reciprocity, we will look, but we must not complicate the lives of people in Moselle even more.

Are you not afraid that this situation will create even more resentment between the French and the Germans when there had already been tensions a year ago at the time of the first confinement when Germany had closed its border?

Yes it is a fear.

Cooperating, moving freely, we sometimes say that it is a luxury or that it is secondary.

Here, it is very concrete and it has value for people.

I am always vigilant and worried that the emotion does not turn into anger or hatred.

We experienced it last spring when the border was closed with sometimes very strict controls.

Everyone remembers it, everyone told me about it today.

This time, we avoided that and now we have to find practical cooperative solutions.

We work very closely with Germany and the Landers who are on the border, in particular the Saar.

Are you calling on the German government to reverse its decision?

It is not for me to interfere in a health decision and a management which we know is very complicated.

But what I'm saying to the German authorities is let's continue to work in the coming days to find solutions that alleviate a little the constraints and the pressure on the daily life of our border workers.

I don't want to promise things that are not achievable, but we can have concrete improvements for public transport or school transport.

This is the priority today.

We will work to remove these constraints as quickly as possible but they will undoubtedly last a few weeks.

Clément Beaune to RFI: in Moselle, “emotion must not turn into anger or hatred”

Clément Beaune to RFI: in Moselle, “emotion must not turn into anger or hatred”

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