Germany: Bundestag adopts controversial toughening of anti-Covid law
Police officers intervene to disperse demonstrators protesting against the adoption of a toughening of the anti-Covid law on April 21, 2021. AFP - TOBIAS SCHWARZ
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German deputies adopted on Wednesday April 21 a controversial amendment to the anti-Covid law which strengthens the powers of Angela Merkel's government to toughen the fight against the third wave of the pandemic.
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The reform of the law on protection against infections voted on Tuesday imposes the automatic triggering of severe restrictions at the national level when a certain contamination threshold is exceeded.
The text provides in particular for the establishment of a night curfew between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m.
While MEPs debated, around 8,000 people, according to police, demonstrated near the Reichstag, the building that houses the Bundestag.
The situation escalated when police ordered the rally to be dispersed, as the protesters did not wear protective masks and did not respect social distancing.
Most remained in place, some threw projectiles in the direction of the police who intervened, in particular using tear gas.
Some 150 people were provisionally arrested, she said.
Heated debates
The reform was able to be adopted thanks to the votes of the conservatives and the social democrats, allies in the government and majority in Parliament.
In total, 342 deputies voted for, 250 against and 64 abstained.
The liberals of the FDP had announced that they would vote against, as well as the extreme right and the radical left Die Linke.
Environmentalists had already warned that they would abstain.
The text must still pass Thursday before the Bundesrat, the upper house of Parliament, before it can enter into force.
The debates, before the adoption of the law by the majority, were heated. The opposition denounces a measure infringing on individual freedoms and exaggerated. Although limited in time, this provision reminds many of the heritage of authoritarian regimes such as Nazism or Communism, says our correspondent in Berlin,
Pascal Thibaut
.
The effectiveness of the curfew is also in doubt.
The text that allows the federal state to impose it where the incidence rate (which measures infections over a week) is greater than 100 for three days, breaks with the compromises of the past with the regions.
It also scratches federalism, the pillar of the post-war German political system.
Many experts also doubt the legal validity of the curfew.
The Constitutional Court was seized and will have to decide as often in Germany.
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Germany
Coronavirus
Angela Merkel