From Parisian cafes to Roman gelato, Europe is reawakening

Paris

EUROPE is waking up from the pandemic with cafes in Paris, gelato vendors in Rome and beer gardens in Bavaria reopening, a major test for the region's recovery in health and economic terms.

Authorities across the continent are loosening restrictions as infection rates fall and vaccinations rise. Italy, the original epicenter of the crisis in Europe, will phase out its national curfew in the coming weeks, and tough curbs are gradually easing across Germany. In France, restaurants can serve outdoor guests beginning on Wednesday, and museums, including the Louvre, plan to welcome visitors again.

As Parisian cafes - including Ernest Hemingway's former hangout Les Deux Magots - prepare, the famed Moulin Rouge got in on the excitement this week, sending can-can dancers onto the streets to promote the cabaret's planned reopening in September by displaying the date on the underside of their skirts.

Despite the exuberance, there's still a pall hanging over the region, which has suffered relapses more than once in its effort to beat Covid-19. As a new contagious variant that originated in India spreads rapidly elsewhere, measures to contain the disease will remain visible. In Berlin, testing will be required to dine outside at restaurants, which can reopen on Friday, and Parisian street life will be less bustling than before the pandemic.

"We are happy to reopen and are blessed to have a location that's a marvel," said Paolo Viglianisi, 66, owner of Paparazzi, a restaurant located in a quiet square just behind Paris's opera house. "But things will never again be as they were."

The restaurant had 39 employees before the crisis, and Mr Viglianisi says he will start off with only about 15 staff on Wednesday. Eventually, he aims to get back to about 100 guests for lunch and another 100 for dinner - roughly two-thirds of his pre-crisis levels.

"The sunshine, the warm weather will help, but you have to reinvent yourself," he said amid preparations for the reopening.

There's a lot at stake. After a sluggish start to vaccination campaigns, Europe's reopening is trailing the UK and the US, and the region can ill afford to fall further behind.

The European Commission last week upgraded its 2021 growth outlook for the euro area to 4.3 per cent after taking account of the bloc's 800 billion-euro (S$1.3 trillion) joint recovery fund for the first time. But that pace would still fall short of the rebounds of at least 6 per cent that economists expect to see in the US and the UK.

Politically, the continent's leaders need to strike the right balance between reviving the economy and protecting public health, or risk the wrath of voters. Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives are fighting with Germany's Greens to run Europe's largest economy, while French President Emmanuel Macron, who tried in vain to avoid a third lockdown, faces a stiff re-election challenge next year.

The mood is one of cautious optimism. Lockdown measures have slowed the spread noticeably, and vaccinations are ramping up fast. But with the threat of new strains like the one from India, risks remain.

"We can be confident but not rash," Mrs Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said this week. With contagion rates still far higher than a year ago, "we haven't yet reached a situation where we can enjoy as relaxed a summer as a year ago."

Authorities are on high alert having learned from last spring, when the disease was seen as under control only to return even more viciously in the fall. Officials in a town near Dusseldorf temporarily quarantined 189 people after a single case of the Indian variant was confirmed. BLOOMBERG