The European Health Ministers will hold an extraordinary meeting on Thursday 13 February in Brussels on the new coronavirus (see EUROPE 12418/3). One of the issues at stake at this meeting, called for in particular by France, Germany and Italy, will be to coordinate Member States' responses to this virus, which has already claimed 910 lives and infected 40,553 people.
Flight restrictions?
At the time of going to press, experts from the Member States were meeting in an EU Council working party to draft conclusions. This would then have to be approved by the national ambassadors to the EU (Coreper) on Wednesday and then submitted to ministers on Thursday.
According to our information, Italy is reportedly very insistent on including flight restrictions in this text, but most Member States are said to be opposed to this. Italy is the only EU country to have suspended all flights "to and from China" since 30 January, as several European airlines such as Lufthansa and Air-France KLM have taken the commercial decision to suspend their flights to China.
Across the Atlantic, the United States has also denied entry to non-Americans who have travelled to China in the past 14 days.
According to AFP, Germany broadly supported the idea of an "EU-wide debate on possible entry restrictions or increased border controls". France, for its part, has on several occasions insisted on the need to act "in a concerted manner at the international level".
However, according to our information, a majority of Member States are against the inclusion in the text of conclusions on flight restrictions.
Asked about this in the European Parliament's Committee on the Environment and Public Health on 3 February, Andrea Ammon, executive director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), said she believed that "from a scientific point of view, suspending [the free movement area] Schengen was not justified".
A decision to this effect at the Extraordinary Council of Health Ministers is therefore unlikely. This would call into question one of the four fundamental freedoms of the EU and Health Ministers are not competent to take such a decision.
According to a provisional agenda for the ministerial meeting, ministers will exchange views on further health emergency measures and discuss ways to prevent the disease - described as a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organisation (WHO) - from spreading within the EU. A WHO representative will attend the meeting.
Call for international coordination
In parallel, the repatriation from China of those Europeans who wish it and the dispatch of personal protective equipment to China through the EU's Civil Protection Mechanism are continuing.
On Monday, the European Commissioner for Crisis Management, Janez Lenarčič, stressed the importance of international cooperation and coordination to stop the epidemic.
"It is crucial that the whole international community focuses on preparedness and response efforts to combat the coronavirus", he said from the EU's Emergency Response Coordination Centre (ERCC).
On Sunday 9 February, 95 EU citizens were repatriated from Wuhan on a British flight. The Commission is co-financing the transport costs of European citizens from the United Kingdom to their respective Member States (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Romania and Sweden).
558 persons, including 447 EU citizens, had already been repatriated from the Wuhan region on three flights - two organised by France and one by Germany, on 31 January and 2 February respectively (see EUROPE 12417/10).
Latest tally
According to a latest ECDC count, the new coronavirus has killed 910 people (including 1 in the Philippines) and infected 40,553. In Europe, there are 14 cases in Germany (2 imported, 12 locally acquired), 11 cases in France (6 imported, 5 locally acquired), 3 cases in Italy (imported), 4 cases in the United Kingdom (2 imported and 2 locally acquired), 2 cases in Spain (imported), 1 case in Belgium (imported), 1 case in Finland (imported) and 1 case in Sweden (imported). (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean, Aminata Niang, Damien Genicot)