The coronavirus has been kind to Germany’s political elite. After years of bleeding votes to the Alternative für Deutschland on the right and the Greens on the left, Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union has finally started to see rising approval ratings. It’s easy to see why. The country’s lockdown was enacted relatively swiftly and presented clearly, its testing programme has been unparalleled in the western world and its healthcare system has proven far more robust than those of neighbouring countries. Now, however, with the virus seemingly in retreat and parts of Europe tentatively easing out of lockdown, tensions are beginning to show, and Germans may soon look back on the quarantine with a kind of nostalgia.

The most immediate cause of contention has been a report by the Leopoldina, Germany’s National Academy of Sciences. The report, which suggests a gradual easing of restrictions, places special emphasis on opening schools and returning to free-market principles as quickly as possible. Merkel’s announcement on Wednesday of a loosening of restrictions seems largely to follow the guidelines provided by the institute – some shops will reopen from Monday. Bookstores, car dealerships and bike shops will be allowed to reopen regardless of size, while other shops will be allowed to open only if they are small enough (800 square metres or less), and are able to present adequate plans for maintaining hygiene. Schools will begin reopening on 4 May, with special emphasis on graduating classes, the oldest primary school children and students who are expected to take exams.

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The government has emphasised repeatedly that the relaxation of the measures is provisional and that continued progress will require the development of sophisticated contact-tracing programmes, including the controversial suggestion that smartphones be used in a widespread programme to track interactions between citizens. The “fragile partial success,” Merkel has insisted, can only hold if the population continues to abide by social distancing regulations as much as possible.

The plan to reopen some shops has been largely greeted with muted relief, though there doesn’t seem to be much hope that it will stimulate the economy more broadly. The plan for reopening schools has been roundly criticised. The Leopoldina’s guidelines for maintaining social distance and proper hygiene at schools are “just not realistic,” as Ilke Hoffmann, the head of the education union, Gewerkschaft Erzeihung und Wissenschaften, told Der Spiegel. There aren’t enough teachers to maintain class sizes of 15 students or less, as the report suggests, and classrooms are far too small to maintain a two-metre distance between students. Furthermore, the report’s claim that older primary school students would be able to abide by social distancing strictures has been roundly criticised, with teachers calling the idea a fantasy. Harriet Kühnemann, the director of a primary school in Gießen, Hesse, told NTV that she “absolutely cannot guarantee that students will wash their hands”.

While plans to reopen primary schools have been criticised for moving too quickly, the Leopoldina’s recommendation that nurseries stay closed until the end of the summer break in August or September has been widely condemned as too restrictive. The theologian and ethicist Peter Dabrock, for example, has said the decision endangers the wellbeing of children. Closing daycare for six months, Dabrock told Deutschland Funk, would constitute “a massive violation of the rights of children”. Heinz Holger, the president of the Deutschen Kinderschutzbundes, a child welfare organisation, warned that such a long closure had already led to increased calls to their domestic violence hotline. Parental groups, meanwhile, have pointed out that many families already face enormous financial difficulty due to the lack of childcare.

The inept recommendations of the Leopoldina can hardly be surprising given its membership. The panel that issued the report consisted of 24 men and two women. The average age of its members was over 60. One wonders how the institution arrived at the conclusion that it was more important to include a physicist specialising in the “mechanics of materials” than experts on the experiences of immigrants, people of colour, or women. Professor Jutta Allmendinger, a member of the Leopoldina (though not a signatory of its report), had no trouble in assembling a more diverse group of signatories to an open letter criticising the report – more than 40 female professors from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds have signed the letter calling for daycare centres to be opened more quickly.

As the burden of the coronavirus begins to be distributed more and more unevenly, and as women and the young are forced to bear more and more of the weight of the crisis, one suspects that many Germans will look with bitter envy towards Denmark, whose prime minister, Mette Friedriksen – a 42-year-old mother – has made early childhood education the first priority as the country emerges from lockdown. Denmark’s experts have concluded that it is not the young but the elderly who should bear the burden of social isolation during the remainder of the pandemic. The very young, who are generally not at risk from the virus, should not have to sacrifice important educational opportunities so that those who belong to at-risk groups can return to public life more quickly. It’s no coincidence that Germany, in contrast, is keeping the youngest children in isolation, while hair salons and department stores are being allowed to reopen. Ending lockdown is not an end in itself, as the German government has made clear, but even getting that right in a country that has excelled so far is proving to be harder than imagined.

• Peter Kuras is a writer and translator based in Berlin