this is news live from berlin on the american faces questions over germany's coronavirus response the chancellor will answer lawmakers queries on germany stafford's to contain the virus and how our government intends to cushion the economic blow from months of lockdown we're bringing that to you like. i. am sumi so much going to thank you for joining us at this hour the german

government's response to the coronavirus pandemic is under the spotlight now we're going to take you live to the german parliament where our chancellor angela merkel is set to address lawmakers and answer their questions about her government's response let's talk about that 1st with our political correspondent kate brady who is following the latest for us kate i get to see you what do we expect to see from the chancellor to hear from the chancellor and from lawmakers today. whether of course at the center of this hour of questions we're expecting to see the corona virus pandemic and the german governments our reactions to that in the in the previous 8 weeks or so here in germany of course there's all sorts of different aspects that we expect a chance language machall to be questioned on of course those rather controversial shutdown measures as well and the timing of which restrictions were imposed and also the timing of which restrictions were east here in germany on top of that i don't doubt that they'll also be questions about the responsibility of germany 16

states and what role they play in the easing of restrictions and of course looking ahead to the coming months if not years as well how the german government intends to actually cushion the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic so it's certainly going to be an interesting hour but it will very much be focused on the coronavirus pandemic and this is of course is something that we've seen over and akhil do several times now since she came into office for her final term in march ok to actually ok can you just cut you off there because the chancellor just starting to speak let's go a live question the time for the government that was planned for the end of march to be held now some 3 weeks ago on the 23rd of april i gave you the opportunity to. talk to you about our plan and the power to make we are still living with the virus and will continue to do so for some time because

the facts haven't changed. even if individual research approaches give us hope there is still no medication and there's still no vaccine to against the current virus that remains there for the danger for every one of us corona infection can often be very mild but it can lead to severe damage and even death i'm thinking here. all of the people who we have lost to this virus and i'm thinking of their families out this moment so these remain the facts but of course we have not stopped searching for a way to combat this in the last few weeks we've done a great deal and we have achieved a great deal we are encouraged right from the word go we knew that we wouldn't be able to stop the spread of the virus but we did want to slow the spread of the virus and indeed knew we had to do that and that has been the aim that we have all

pursuit now we can say in recent weeks and months we have all made huge efforts to achieve this target and we have come much closer to achieving that. we have been successful because our citizens the states industry have joined forces to combat the virus the number of new infections that the robert costa institute's reports to us every day mean that we are not overwhelming. the response capacity of our public health systems and through the quantity and containment measures we've been able to also trace qana attack and with chains and the apps that we're working on what hopefully make this even easier we've used recent weeks to strengthen our public health systems where we can i'm most impressed with the efforts made by the municipality and the regional government but also the bundestag that capacity is for i see years they've been increased and i

see the amazing achievements that we've managed in the public health service not least in the local health departments and i'm very pleased that we were able to offer support for these departments because that is exactly where the tracing of infection chains begins and so much depends on this international cooperation and. in the fight against the virus is incredibly important with both in the e.u. but also in the g. 7 and g. 20 countries colleagues we can be very pleased that we have all pulled together so well in recent weeks but i see a duty here the duty that what we have achieved so far not to be endangered. since march we have lived with all kinds of types of deprivation and some cases even our rights we have sacrificed and if we do now it risk

a relapse that would be so depressing it would be such a shame if we end up locking down again. none of us want that to happen so let us have both courage and prudence let as slowly step by step open our public life but always be aware of the developments of the pandemic and work and in schools cafes and sports associations let us return to these places but let us retain hygiene rules always washing our hands keeping a distance and being careful for others i believe that if we remain consistent in our hygiene rules and therefore prevent a relapse we will all benefit because then both is possible in the next phase of handling both the protection of our public health but also ensuring that our

economy gets back off the ground as quickly as possible preserving as many jobs as possible and ensuring that we can enjoy our lives in the public sphere thank you. very good videos of our thank you the 1st question is from the f.t. . we discussed that madam to. on your mission you have referred to the problems of the pandemic here but you like it but you haven't said anything about the impact on the economy for this country so my 1st question has to be about that one up with because your corona policy and that of the german government is currently destroying existence the livelihood of too many people in germany we have 10000000 people in short time work before and we are assuming with that huge amounts of money will be disappearing and this. unemployment is increased the g.d.p.

has. collapsed every week this lockdown cost is $42000000000.00 euros it's the biggest recession since the 2nd world war so where is your concept for financing what's going to happen after the crisis and can you exclude today that ordinary citizens by paying higher taxes will have to shoulder these costs. the 1st of all. i'm very grateful that you can place pandemic occurred in favorable sound economic state of this country which means that we were able to do a great deal to safeguard people's livelihoods and i'm grateful that most of this parliament has supported our efforts in this regard and that people in short time work compensation is a consequence of the pandemic but it shows that we are not. leaving people entirely

on their own but that we can build bridges and reach out a helping hand to them and that will remain. and i believe that if we reach good agreement obviously none of us can predict when we will have medication to treat this illness when we will have a vaccine but we have got a good way of coping with it i'm not saying that we will all. not noticed it of course we will but we will do what we can to ensure that as many citizens as possible possible can go back to work but in her sponsible careful manner. and then the question about whether the tax burden will be borne by citizens i haven't heard a response for that so are you planning to compensate for this somehow of course you've destroyed livelihoods what do you say to people in the hospitality industry a restaurant owner who goes bankrupt you have not helped them that's not the

case at all you know that there's liquidity help there is short that's the time compensation and once they open their restaurants again we're going to reduce that for us to target hospitality industry and we'll be looking at how we can help in other ways as well i haven't said that we've finished with helping industry of course we'll do more to stimulate it and i can tell you that there are no plans to increase taxes on ordinary citizens. i mean it's part of policymaking isn't it that we can only give you a response based on where we are now otherwise we would be soothsayers predicting the future and i wouldn't suggest that i can see that now we have a caller from the s.p.d. . counselor madam chancellor you should really push through should be the magazine has reported about the difficulties with seasonal workers my own constituency is impacted on by this we don't have enough data on this madam chancellor post with

both in terms of the seasonal workers in agriculture as well as workers in the meat industry employees have been working at deplorable state of affairs we've heard a great deal about the fact that there hasn't been enough hygiene which has led to a lot of people catching corona what measures are in place by the government to tackle this do agree with the as a parliamentary group that we need to. change the way we work here to both retain jobs but also ensure that people health is protected in that they get fair wages. the german government regarding the seasonal workers has approved a concept which is coordinated with the robert institute which will mean that workers in agriculture will have to adhere to. much stricter hygiene regimes. and we've also talked about the situation in the meat

industry we heard the shocking information from there will be debating that as well the german government is planning to approve changes and next monday the labor minister is going to present a concept on that and i hope that we have to reach an agreement on this particularly when it comes to the accommodation of workers in the meat industry there are things that must be addressed and we have to look at who is going to be made responsible for changing this i have to tell you i am also not happy with what's emerged here when it comes to implementing these things for seasonal workers it is of course the case that the authorities responsible on the ground have to scrutinise that these efforts are put into place and the employers must also make sure that they have here to these hygiene regulations if not they will be repercussions. madam chancellor. i would like to respond to the fact that the labor and social minister conference referred to this date and 8

federal states. just counter scientists saying that they want to ensure that the data that has not gone to the public health departments must be put forward to them and we want to hear what can be done here would not be used. in terms of agriculture well if the federal states are not able to give us the data there's not much we can do is not the case that the german government has to do by being generate this data we are waiting for the federal states to give us that date but as soon as we have it will be happy to pass it on in terms of the number seasonal workers there's a direct quote of how many people are allowed to go where and i think they have the data is indeed clear in the meat industry this may not be the case for my don't have an in from the f.t.p. will be asking the next question. we don't have other than thank you president madam chancellor. but we have just heard how important

kona tracing app may be in tracing infection and changes on contact chains if. it is the case that it's i would like to start researchers have been working on this for some time i think it's over 7 weeks now that we've been working on there's nothing and this corona tracing as far as i've understood it is under the auspices of the health ministry it's now the us as the german government you said there's a consortium. a p and there's systems working on this i would like to know why it is the case that in the chancery is office i mean. involving the federal press office and as well the happy is being developed and i think. this is because certain measures are being taken because now we've heard it's not going to finish until june. when a thought well by the minister of the chancellor's office visited you yesterday i

don't know if you didn't speak about the app toll but if you didn't i'm happy to talk about it with you the chancellor's office has a coordinating function in all carjacks of the german government the health minister is responsible for. the health aspects of data protection is the ministry of interior and the chancellor's office just coordinated and now you know that we're pursuing a number of approaches we have decided to go for the decentralized approach france has gone for the centralized approach and we believe that the decentralized approach will give us better public acceptance so that's why we've gone for that obviously designing an app like this takes time there's a great deal of trust that this requires as well and i'm pleased that telecom and as a.