The Member States’ Ambassadors to the European Union (Coreper) reached a “broad agreement” by qualified majority, on Friday, 9 October, on the draft EU Council Recommendation to coordinate national measures against Covid-19, said a spokesperson for the German EU Council Presidency.
The Commission had proposed this non-binding Recommendation on 4 September (see EUROPE 12553/1). The agreement will now be submitted for formal adoption to the European Affairs Ministers, who will meet on Tuesday 13 October in Luxembourg.
The aim of the text is to bring some order to the travel restriction measures taken in response to Covid-19 and to avoid, if possible, the return of controls at the EU’s internal borders.
However, the agreement does not address sensitive issues such as the duration of quarantines to be imposed on the return of certain areas or the mutual recognition of tests. These subjects will remain purely national competences and Member States are simply called upon to strengthen their coordination efforts.
According to one diplomat, this recommendation also cannot avoid the risk that individual countries may re-establish controls if they deem them necessary.
Pursuing a regionalised approach, the Recommendation “aims to ensure greater coordination between Member States considering the adoption of measures restricting free movement on public health grounds”, the text states.
In order to limit these measures to what is strictly necessary, Member States “should, in a non-discriminatory manner and as much as possible, apply those restrictions to persons coming from specific areas or regions particularly affected rather than to the entire territory of a Member State”.
The Recommendation recalls that such restrictions should only be considered “when Member States have sufficient evidence to justify such restrictions in terms of their benefit for public health and they have reasonable grounds to believe that the restrictions would be effective”.
In concrete terms, three criteria should make it possible to identify risk areas and to consider restricting free movement: - the 14-day cumulative Covid-19 case notification rate, that is, the total number of newly notified cases per 100,000 population in the last 14 days at regional level; - the test positivity rate over the past week; - and the testing rate, which is the number of tests per 100,000 population carried out in the past week.
Member States should provide the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) with the available data on a weekly basis and also at regional level “to ensure that any measures can be targeted to regions where they are strictly necessary”.
Using colour coding, the ECDC will then classify: - in green: areas where the 14-day cumulative Covid-19 case notification rate is less than 25 and if the test positivity rate is less than 4%; - in orange: (1) areas where the number of notified cases is less than 50 and the test positivity rate is more than 4%, or (2) areas where the number of notified cases is between 25 and 150 but the test positivity rate is less than 4%, and; - in red: (1) areas where the number of notified cases exceeds 50 and the test positivity rate exceeds 4%, (2) areas where the number of notified cases exceeds 150; - in grey: areas where insufficient information is available or if the number of tests notified is less than or equal to 300 per 100,000 population.
All restrictions should be lifted as soon as an area becomes ‘green’ again, the text says.
It is for the Member States to decide on the nature of the restrictions, which may take the form of quarantine measures or post-arrival or post-departure testing.
Finally, the Recommendation requires Member States to inform the public within 24 hours and to carry out cross-border exchanges of information between administrations within 48 hours.
A European passenger location document should also be developed.
Link to the agreement: https://bit.ly/34JvmlO (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)