To fight the coronavirus, the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Community, the Federal Ministry of Health and the federal states’ interior and health ministries have drawn up a model ordinance on quarantine for travellers entering and returning to Germany.

At their regular Monday meeting on 6 April 2020, the federal ministers of finance, foreign affairs, health, defence and the interior, known as the “Corona Cabinet”, decided that travellers entering or returning to Germany after an absence of more than one day should remain in quarantine at home for two weeks. The model ordinance implements this decision.

Germany’s 16 federal states, which are responsible for ordering the quarantine measures, had agreed with the Federal Government that they would come up with uniform standards for them. The Federal Ministry of the Interior was charged with heading up the effort to draft the ordinance, which the federal states are to start enforcing in time for the Easter weekend.

Major restrictions on travel to Germany for all but specific groups of travellers have been in place already since 16 March 2020. The travel restrictions are intended to break the chain of infection in cross-border traffic and further contain the spread of the coronavirus.

The restrictions on cross-border traffic apply in parallel to those on public life in Germany which the federal and state governments agreed on previously.