New measures taken by the Consultation Committee

The following measures will take effect from Saturday 27 March 2021, and apply for 4 weeks:

• Non-essential stores may remain open, but can only work by appointment. You may only shop alone, or with one other person from the same family. Ordering and pick-up is still allowed; 
• The non-medical contact professions, such as hairdressers, beauty salons, non-medical pedicure salons, massage parlours, tattoo and piercing parlours, will have to close their doors again;
• Primary, secondary and higher education classes will be suspended from 29 March to 2 May. Nursery schools remain open.

If you have to close your company, and you cannot employ your employees more or less because of the imposed corona measures, and/or does your employee have to take care of the children because of the closure of the schools? Then you can apply for temporary unemployment for them due to corona force majeure.

The following measures already apply and will continue to apply, but were further emphasised at the press conference by the Consultation Committee:

• The obligation to telework remains in place.
  Teleworking is mandatory for all companies and services unless this is impossible due to the nature of the function or the continuity of the company.

This will be checked more strictly. For example, we have heard that it will become mandatory to keep a register in which the planning of who will be present in the workplace, and when. If an infringement is found, this may lead to the mandatory closure of the company;

• The curfew will continue to apply;
• The ban on non-essential travel. There will be checks at the borders.

You can read the measures above as they were explained in the Consultation Committee press conference. The concrete elaboration of these measures, including with regard to the register in the event of non-application of teleworking, has yet to be implemented in the Ministerial Decree.