Following the decision to extent the ban on non-essential travel for one additional month, Belgium's Minister of Justice Vincent Van Quickenborne went on a Belgian news show on 7 February to announce that "there will be border controls". The Minister warned that anyone found in violation of the ban would be fined and forced to turn around.
While Van Quickenborne's words may have sounded quite unambiguous, it turns out that the reality at the Belgian border seems to be quite different.
On the cross-border workers website www.lesfrontaliers.lu, a number of residents who live near the Belgian border report that not much has changed for them since the ban was announced.
Eléonore, a pharmacist in the municipality of Arlon, states that she still travels to Luxembourg and even France to go grocery shopping. She has never seen a single police officer, adding that she even goes to the hairdresser's in Luxembourg.
Belgium's Federal Police specified that they were in fact carrying out checks, but they were random, and the location changed every day. Since the restrictions entered into force, police have recorded 434 violations involving people who did not fill in the necessary form and 105 penalty notices for non-residents who were unable to present a negative test result.
According to Léoni, who has worked as a construction worker in Belgium for over 30 years, the main problem is that the government simply does not have enough officers to carry out extensive checks at their borders. From his construction site, he sometimes observes the number plates of the cars entering the country and says that they "come from many different places and, above all, a lot of them are coming into Belgium".
The whole situation is not made any easier by the sometimes confusing documentation required to cross the border. Vita, who works as a psychologist in Luxembourg, crosses the border two times a week to travel to Namur and only needs a declaration of honour. However, such a declaration must be filled in for each trip across the border until April and if the nature of the trip changes, a different type of declaration is needed. According to her, the government should simplify the procedures as every citizen has their own responsibility.
