While restaurants will likely be able to reopen their terraces next week, Luxembourg's Consultative Commission on Human Rights thinks that the new Covid-19 law will leave some out in the cold.

Restaurant terraces in Luxembourg are likely to reopen on 7 April, seeing as the relevant passage is expected to be retained in the new Covid-19 law, which will be voted on Thursday. Good news for the Horesca sector, which has been closed since the end of November. But not all restaurant owners are on the same level, as the Luxembourg Consultative Commission on Human Rights (CCDH) points out.

While the Commission generally welcomes the lifting of restrictions, it nevertheless has reservations about the relevance of opening terraces in Luxembourg. "The scope of this measure is likely to have only a symbolic value," it says, since not all restaurant owners will be able to benefit from it.

In fact, only businesses "with a large enough terrace to justify opening from an economic point of view" will be able to benefit. In other words, restaurants with a terrace that is too small to benefit from this measure will continue to be left out.

Merely a compromise

As the draft bill indicates, this is in fact more of a compromise than a real opening measure linked to an improvement in the situation – which is in fact still quite worrying. According to the CCDH, it is a compromise between, on the one hand, the "government's desire to offer prospects to a sector, that of HORESCA, which has suffered particularly from the restrictions imposed in the context of the fight against the current pandemic, and, on the other hand, the safety and health of people".

In particular, the bill provides for the opening of terraces from 6 am to 6 pm, the compulsory wearing of masks for staff in direct contact with customers as well as for the customers themselves when they are not seated, consumption at the table, a limit on the number of customers to two per table (unless they are part of the same household or living together), a distance of one and a half metres between tables (or the installation of barriers). The draft bill also initially stipulated the collection of "personal data" from customers, but this passage has allegedly been taken out.

Here again, the CCDH is a bit puzzled: why open the terraces between 6 am and 6 pm, when the curfew only comes into force at 11 pm? The Commission points out that people might still organise the "after-works" and indulge in the "Rambazamba" that Prime Minister Xavier Bettel wants to avoid, regardless of the terraces' closing times.