The European Commission is "yet to examine the measures announced" by the Hungarian government on 28 August concerning the closure of its borders to foreign nationals as of 1 September, Adalbert Jahnz, spokesman of the institution in charge of Home Affairs said on Monday. The institution received notification of these measures on Monday. These Schengen controls will cover all land and air borders for 30 days, the spokesman said.
He was reacting to the Hungarian government's announcement on 28 August that only Hungarian residents and nationals will be allowed to enter Hungary from 1 September. Hungarians and Hungarian residents returning from abroad will have to quarantine themselves and foreign citizens will only be allowed to come in "justified cases", the government said, which justified the measures by the resurgence of infections in the EU.
The Commission, which regularly organises meetings between Member States on pandemic-related restriction measures, said it was "not informed" of this plan at the 28 August meeting. In any case, the spokesman noted on Monday that, according to the Commission, "internal border controls are not an effective measure" to respond to this crisis. Furthermore, any measure restricting movement must "remain proportionate and non-discriminatory", said spokesman Christian Wigand, who is in charge of the free movement of citizens.
Discussions in favour of more coordination
Since the beginning of the pandemic, there has been criticism of the lack of coordination at European level on return travel. On 27 August, the French President, Emmanuel Macron, and the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, discussed this issue at the Fort de Brégançon.
"What's the real flaw? To be honest, we do not have the same data or the same evaluations, that is to say, there is no European centre, no European agency that says, 'There you go, the situation is risky in this place, in this department, etc'. So this is a deficiency and we are trying to work on it", explained the French Secretary of State for European Affairs, Clément Beaune, a few days before the meeting.
When questioned on 31 August on this issue, the Commission stated that it was making every effort to do so. It said it had written a letter to Member States reminding them of a series of key principles before applying travel restrictions.
The letter, as seen by EUROPE, urges Member States not to base their analysis on the number of cases alone, but to look also at existing screening policies and the number of positive cases. It also calls for not discriminating between Member States, "for example, by applying more generous travel rules to a neighbouring country compared to travel from another Member State with the same epidemiological situation", or for preferring quarantine and/or mandatory testing to pure travel bans.
Christian Wigand added that the Commission had then prepared a "coordination document" based on three points to support the Member States in their consultation work on travel restrictions, quarantine measures on return from a country and other provisions.
A first technical discussion took place on 28 August. The three points discussed were: the establishment of "common criteria for determining epidemiological risk", a "colour-coding system to identify risk areas", and "measures to be put in place upon return from these risk areas", the spokesman added.
An informal discussion is also scheduled for Wednesday 2 September in the Committee of Permanent Representatives (Coreper), and the subject could again be raised at the weekly videoconference of EU Health Ministers on 4 September.
Furthermore, Paris and Berlin announced over the weekend that they were also preparing an initiative to coordinate the actions of Member States, while the summer was marked by various controversies between Member States over the classification of certain regions and cities as red, orange or green zones.
It should be noted that national ambassadors will also on 2 September have a discussion on the EU list of third countries whose nationals may return to the EU for non-essential stays. According to a diplomatic source, things are not expected to change from the last update of 7 August (see EUROPE 12544/8).
A meeting to prepare for these various discussions was held on Monday 31 August at the IPCR, the Integrated Political Crisis Response group of the EU Council (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic and Sophie Petitjean)