Citizens have launched four petitions, all reaching the required number of signatures, in an attempt to reduce the restrictions and social inequalities NADER GHAVAMI

Citizens have launched four petitions, all reaching the required number of signatures, in an attempt to reduce the restrictions and social inequalities NADER GHAVAMI

Four separate petitions on the government’s CovidCheck rules are due to be debated in parliament after reaching more than the 4,500 signatures required, with petitioners saying the system has divided society.

Luxembourg at the end of last week scaled back the 2G+ CovidCheck regime to the 3G  system (recovered, vaccinated or tested negative), which is now also optional and no longer mandatory in the workplace. But four petitions are calling for further change and have reached enough public support for an exchange with lawmakers and the government.

One petition says that CovidCheck should either be abolished or that testing should be required also of those who are vaccinated and recovered, with costs paid for by the state. “The covid-19 vaccination protects neither from infection nor transmission of the virus,” the . Another petition also calls for to continue. A country-wide PCR testing programme was abolished in September last year. 

A third public debate will take place over the obligation to present a CovidCheck certificate when trying to , such as hospitals and schools, and the workplace, which signatories want to see scrapped. Finally, a fourth petition says that there should be a on whether to keep the CovidCheck regime in place at all.

The regime granting the vaccinated and unvaccinated population different rights has divided society and created a multi-tier system, petitioners say in different documents.

Luxembourg’s ADR party is so far the only political party in Luxembourg to have called for an end to all pandemic restrictions, setting a 1 March deadline.

The grand duchy on Friday also lifted the 11pm curfew for the hospitality sector, which François Koepp, head of Luxembourg’s hospitality federation Horesca, in January had called a “catastrophe”, but it is far from following other EU countries to remove all restrictions.

At the start of the month Denmark lifted all virus measures and announced that coronavirus is “no longer a critical threat to society”, due to an uncoupling in the correlation between infections and hospitalisations. The Danish government also said that their highly vaccinated population has allowed them to take these measures.

Sweden also lifted all covid-19 restrictions on 9 February and put an end to covid-19 testing. Norway, too, is due to remove its public health measures on 17 February, with England also planning the move this month, earlier than initially expected.

Following the path of Spain, Italy, Austria, the Czech Republic, Switzerland and Belgium, Luxembourg on 11 February eased some restrictions. The latest covid-19 law has increased the number of people that are allowed to attend events and gatherings to 2,000.  This had been brought down to 200 in December 2021 as the then unknown omicron variant appeared in the grand duchy.

Quarantine for people who have been in direct contact with an infected patient is also being abolished for people who are unvaccinated, while there is no minimum isolation period anymore and people who contracted the virus can exit isolation as soon as they self-test negative two days in a row.

The pandemic restrictions have seen weekly protests gather in Luxembourg City. And on 13 February around 100 people convened at the Aire de Capellen on the A6 motorway to join the “freedom convoy” headed to Brussels to protest against covid health measures, a movement that started some weeks ago in Canada and has spread to neighbouring France and Germany.