Fearing that the EU will once again be faced with the shortages and unrest caused by the reintroduction of border controls last March, the European Commissioner for Transport, Adina Vălean, wrote on Tuesday 19 January to the relevant EU ministers asking them to recognise freight and transport workers “as essential personnel”.
The latter, she writes, should be exempted from the obligation to submit to the tests and quarantine measures reintroduced by certain States to limit the spread of the new variant of Covid-19.
In addition, the Commissioner calls for the ‘green lanes’ implemented in the spring to reduce waiting times at internal borders (see EUROPE 12452/14) to be kept operational.
This is all the more urgent at a time when “essential goods such as vaccines must be distributed rapidly throughout Europe”, stresses Ms Vălean.
She also assures that freight transport personnel are “a fairly safe group”. Proof of this, according to her, is the positive rate (0.3%) observed during the systematic tests imposed in recent weeks on lorry drivers before crossing the Channel.
Calling on the Heads of State
“The discussion on border closure and testing in the EU falls beyond the scope of transport ministers”, regrets Raluca Marian, head of the Permanent Delegation of the World Road Transport Organisation (IRU) to the EU. “We need Ms von der Leyen and the Heads of State and Government to act”.
In view of the meeting of European leaders to be held on Thursday 21 January, the IRU Secretary General, Umberto de Pretto, therefore called on the President of the Commission to intervene in person to ensure that the Member States comply with the request made by the Commissioner for Transport.
“Our most immediate concern is Germany”, de Pretto said in his letter, pointing out that the country would be likely to block entry to its territory to anyone who does not have a negative PCR test.
"This will cause huge blockages in North-South and East-West EU freight corridors, with devastating consequences on EU supply chains”, he insists.
See the letter from Ms Vălean: http://bit.ly/39KOZfU and that of Mr de Pretto: http://bit.ly/3o1I5bh (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)