Opinion / Tyler Brûlé
Is the end within reach?
Yesterday morning I made a break for the border – the Swiss-Austrian frontier to be precise. Having broken a personal record for staying within the confines of a single country for the longest period in 40 years, crossing into the Republic of Austria at the Au village border post was both a letdown (they didn’t even bother to check passports for the fun of it!) and a relief (Schengen is up and running again and life is back to normal).
Things got a bit more interesting by the time I arrived in the Bregenzerwald region and sat down for lunch. While Switzerland is still sticking with its 2 metre distance rule (let’s see what the country’s Federal Council says on 24 June), Austria’s 1 metre guidance has all but collapsed and Germany’s 1.5 metre rule is more of a bureaucratic technicality than anything else. As trains and passenger aircraft start criss-crossing borders again, Europe will need to swiftly find some type of harmony when it comes to handling health protocols – if for no other reason than to reassure travellers while also keeping heads cool.
With some corners of Europe resisting the call to voluntarily don masks (the city of Zürich is definitely holding out), legal observers see a bigger problem given that large-scale protests have been allowed to go ahead with zero physical distancing. “It’s going to be tough to impose pandemic-specific hygiene fines on retailers and café owners when they’ve already set a precedent by allowing large groups to gather,” said one Swiss lawmaker. “I think we’ll just see the distancing issue organically disappear.”