Protests Continue in Germany over New COVID-19 Lockdown Rules

On Wednesday demonstrations were held in central Berlin amid proposals of new coronavirus-related rules. Critical of intensifying lockdown measures, protesters have gathered in opposition against a bill making it easier and explicitly legal for the German government to impose restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of the coronavirus. Until now, it was unclear whether many nationwide restrictions throughout the year had been legal, with many disputing their constitutional legitimacy.

Over 100 people were arrested during the recent protests, according to the Associated Press. The police also used water cannons in the cold weather to compel protesters to disperse. Later that day, remaining protesters were cleared away in the Tiergarten, ‘Berlin’s Hyde Park’, by police using dogs, as reported by Felix Huesmann.

There have been numerous widely reported protests against coronavirus measures in Germany, despite the country’s handling of the disease in the spring of 2020 being considered one of the most successful in Europe. With the numbers of infections and deaths before September being comparatively moderate, Germany has been experiencing a strong ‘second wave’, as have almost all European countries. While this is best visible in the sharp rise of ‘cases’, lower mortality during this wave has so far kept the number of deaths with the coronavirus below the levels from the spring.

In a heated parliamentary debate, German Health Minister Jens Spahn took a stand against the protests, maintaining that Germany’s handling of the pandemic has been better than most, asking ‘Which country would you rather be in? None of our neighboring countries have managed the crisis better.’ 

While Spahn sees the new COVID-19 rules as necessary in order to continue managing the pandemic in an effective way, the opposition party AfD has likened the bill to the Enabling Act of 1933, which gave the then-chancellor Adolf Hitler the powers to circumvent the Reichstag (Parliament) when enacting new laws, giving him essentially dictatorial powers.

Similarly, a law was passed in Hungary in April, giving its Prime Minister Viktor Orbán the powers to ‘rule by order and without parliament’, the DW reported. While such laws and developments should raise alarm in any country, and the Hungarian law was, at the time, heavily criticized by other states as well as the EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, such condemnations have, by and large, not been articulated with regards to the recent, admittedly weaker, German equivalent.