On Friday, MPs will vote on the adapted version of the Covid-19 regulations. However, on Tuesday morning, Minister of Education Claude Meisch revealed to the members of the Parliamentary Commission on Education that the section dealing with the educational sector would be taken out of the draft bill at the last minute.
Meisch explained he took this decision to "avoid and anticipate" numerous formal objections by the Council of State.
The opposition, meanwhile, did not mince its words and harshly criticised the Minister's handling of this matter.
Opposition MPs slammed what they described as school closures "without any legal basis", "government failure", and policy decisions based on "recommendations, ministerial directives, and grand-ducal regulations" instead of laws.
In particular, the criticism is aimed at parts of the bill which would enable the Minister to close down public and private schools as well as structures offering extracurricular activities without any legal basis.
Even before publishing its official assessment, the Council of State made it clear that it was fundamentally opposed to this particular section of the draft bill.
MP Marc Baum from the Leftist Party (Déi Lénk) thinks that this is what led the Ministry of Education to take out the problematic sections "overnight".
According to Baum, this is a significant mistake, pointing out that the section was only included in the first place because the government noticed that there was no legal basis for any of the measures concerning school closures.
MP Claude Wiseler from the Christina Social People's Party (CSV) has the same view on the issue, harshly criticising the fact that the Ministry of Education has done "nothing" to propose a legal basis for school closures. Wiseler considers Meisch's treatment of the rule of law "unacceptable".
The CSV MP does not understand Meisch's decision to merely issue recommendations. The problem, according to Wiseler, is that if a school administration did not comply with any one of these "recommendations", it would immediately receive an order by the director of the National Health Directorate forcing them to do it.
This, the MP explained, is simply not how a state governed by the rule of law works. Wiseler specified that the opposition does not criticise the measure itself, but simply the way the Minister decided to implement it.
The obligation to wear masks will remain in the draft bill, however, and also applies to private schools, such as the Waldorfschule (a type of school relying on an alternative teaching style, mainly popular in Germany) where, according to the newspaper Tageblatt, the majority of students and teachers do not wear masks but are instead separated by Perspex dividers.
The school explained in a statement that they used Perspex as an alternative to masks. According to the statement, ten teachers caring for lower grade students were against the obligation to wear masks, while three were in favour and two had a neutral stance on the issue.
In the letter to parents, the school also states that children only experienced mild or even no symptoms from a Covid-19 infection and could not infect adults. While it is indeed true that children usually do not experience severe symptoms, it should be pointed out that numerous studies suggest that children can in fact infect adults in the same way adults can.
Santéskommissioun: Vill Diskussioune ronderëm Neierung am Covid-Gesetz iwwer Schoulen
