After a spectacular U-turn on the five-day Easter shutdown, the German federal government is now examining the possibility of temporarily prohibiting people from taking trips to popular tourist destinations abroad. 

German government probes tourist travel ban

The federal government is considering whether it can temporarily prevent people from making trips to popular holiday destinations abroad due to the coronavirus pandemic. “An order to check if there is a possibility to temporarily stop travel to popular holiday destinations abroad… is now being checked by the responsible departments,” said deputy government spokesperson Ulrike Demmer on Wednesday in Berlin, adding that there were “major constitutional hurdles.” 

Demmer did not provide any further details as to what exactly was being considered, but a spokesperson for the Federal Foreign Office said that a worldwide travel warning, like the one implemented at the beginning of the pandemic last spring, was not currently being planned.

Federal states still angry about Mallorca decision

The decision to remove popular tourist destinations such as the Spanish island of Mallorca from the government’s list of coronavirus risk areas, while travel within Germany remains prohibited, has prompted widespread outrage - as well as a flurry of flight bookings to the island. 

“It is not good that such holiday trips are taking place now in this situation,” said Finance Minister Olaf Scholz on Wednesday, adding that it was “not right” that some people were going on holiday abroad while travel within Germany was still not allowed.

The federal states of Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Rhineland-Palatinate had put forward a plan to allow “low-contact holidays” in their states over the Easter period, but this was rejected by Merkel. She described this as sending the “wrong signal” amid the current exponential growth of cases in Germany. 

In an attempt to diffuse the situation, at Monday’s coronavirus summit the federal and state governments agreed that, in future, all air passengers would be required to prevent a negative test result upon arrival in Germany, but this was deemed insufficient by many figures within the domestic tourism industry.