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Unlike most factories in Germany, which have kept running thanks to the imposition of strict hygiene and organizational measures, the country’s car factories largely shuttered in mid-March and are only now starting to fire up again. Daimler, for example, last week reopened powertrain plants in Hamburg, Berlin, and Stuttgart, and its Kamenz battery factory near Dresden.

‘Let’s not gamble’

Germany’s federated nature has led to some inconsistency in the lifting of restrictions. Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose administration signaled the cautious relaxation of coronavirus restrictions a couple of weeks back, warned last Thursday that some states could be moving too quickly as they try to get their economies humming again. “Let’s not gamble what we’ve achieved and risk a setback,” she said. “We are not in the final phase of this pandemic; we’re just at the beginning.”

BVfK chairman Klein is also critical of the way state authorities have handled auto showroom reopenings in piecemeal fashion; for example, the state of Saarland gave the all-clear for last Monday, Berlin for Wednesday, and Bavaria for Monday next week. “Unfortunately this is very inconsistently organized,” he says. “The problem lies in [Germany’s] federal structure. It would be better if the [federal] government could prescribe these things uniformly.”

Spain, Italy, and Denmark enter ‘Phase 2’

How to reopen the economy has become a big debate beyond Germany.

In Spain, which has imposed one of the tightest lockdowns in Europe, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has warned the reopening will be “slow and gradual,” and if there are signs of new outbreaks, the “de-escalation” may be reversed.

The hard-hit country, which has the third highest confirmed COVID-19 death toll in the world at over 22,000, allowed some “nonessential” businesses—including factories and construction sites—to reopen after Easter. And, began on last Sunday, children up to 14 years of age will be allowed to leave their homes for the first time in six weeks, to take walks of up to an hour with an adult. (Yes, the rules are that precise.)

On last Wednesday, Spain extended its “state of alert”—which gives the government the power to impose the lockdown—until May 9.

Meanwhile, Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte took to Facebook earlier last week to alert Italians that the lifting of Europe’s longest ongoing lockdown is imminent. “A reasonable expectation is that we will apply it from May 4,” he said on last Monday.

So far, details have been scant on what “Phase 2,” as it’s being called in Italy, would look like.

After Easter, the government gave the green light to garden shops, children’s clothing retailers, and bookstores. Across the street from L’Università degli Studi Roma Tre, one of Rome’s biggest universities, bookshops opened their doors last week to few customers. With classes suspended indefinitely, however, students are staying home; the few people walking past the bookshops were all donning masks and were in no mood to browse for new titles.

One European country that’s ahead of most of its neighbors is Denmark, where the government reopened schools on April 14, a move that caused a bit of a stir. Groups of parents protested the move, even forming a Facebook group called “My kid is not going to be a guinea pig.”

The Danes aren’t the only ones advocating a go-slow return to normal life.

Germany’s business lobby is calling for the reactivation of the country’s economy to take place with extreme caution, lest it trigger a second wave of COVID-19. “A new shutdown would have unforeseeable consequences for the country,” said Dieter Kempf, president of the Federal Association of German Industry, last week.

Additional reporting from Ian Mount in Madrid and Bernhard Warner in Rome.