Member States were invited on Monday 29 June to approve by written procedure, by noon on Tuesday 30 June, the first European list of third-countries whose citizens will be allowed to re-enter the European Union for leisure travel from 1 July.
This list, which will cover 14 countries + 1 (China) and will also include tourists from Andorra, San Marino and Monaco, has been in preparation since Friday 26 June (see EUROPE 12504/1).
The national ambassadors to the EU (Coreper) agreed last weekend on a first short list which will be updated every two weeks. However, the capitals then had to be consulted.
Discussions were held on certain countries, with sources mentioning, for example, certain difficulties in Spain with the presence of Morocco, while other Member States were keen to ensure that residents of Morocco could once again freely visit the EU.
The ambassadors have thus selected the following third-countries : Canada, Australia, Uruguay, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Rwanda, Thailand, Georgia, and Serbia and Montenegro.
China has been temporarily set aside on the basis of reciprocity: its residents will only be able to travel to the EU again if Beijing, in exchange, accepts EU travellers back on Chinese soil.
On 11 June, in a communication (see EUROPE 12504/1), the Commission proposed that the six countries of the Western Balkans should be included on this list. In the end, only Serbia and Montenegro was included.
Faced with a still worrying health situation, the United States, Brazil, but also Russia and Turkey are logically not on this first European list.
The EU27 had previously agreed on a set of criteria for determining the list, with priority being given to the epidemiological criterion.
In the draft recommendation, which provides a framework for the list and which has not been amended since 26 June, the Member States have thus retained the threshold 'close to or below' 16 infections per 100,000 inhabitants observed over the last two weeks. The trend of new cases on the day of the reopening of the external borders compared to the previous two weeks is second, followed by the overall response to the Covid-19 by a third country, taking into account available information on aspects such as testing, surveillance, contact tracing, lockdown, processing and notification mechanisms.
Member States will also need to have the capacity to rapidly reopen or, on the contrary, close their external borders to third country nationals depending on the assessment of the health situation. And they will have to coordinate so that they do not decide unilaterally to open their borders to third-country nationals if the other Member States have not decided to do so. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)