As expected, on Friday 29 January the national ambassadors to the EU approved the Commission’s draft recommendation to tighten travel restrictions in the EU (see EUROPE 12643/1).
On the other hand, they asked for a little more time for the recommendation on non-essential travel from third countries, as some member countries wanted tougher measures, two sources stressed. The ambassadors will return to this at the beginning of next week.
The recommendation on non-essential travel in the EU will be adopted by Monday 1 February by written procedure. Member States wanted to act quickly to contain the virus and this recommendation was considered more urgent. The text, improved to take into account the specificities of key workers and travellers, i.e. frontier workers who must be able to continue to carry out their activities, remains however similar to the Commission’s proposals.
The Commission proposed on Monday that a new category of regions be created by the ECDC, a ‘dark red’ category with an infection rate exceeding 500 cases/100,000 inhabitants over the last two weeks. From these areas, it will be mandatory to require a negative PCR test before coming to another Member State and a quarantine period, with States also being able to generally go further than the recommendation. The ECDC will also have to update this new ‘dark red’ zone map on a weekly basis.
For travellers from third countries, the Commission had suggested that even essential workers should have to provide a negative PCR test before travelling, but some Member States are now going further, such as Germany, which has introduced flight bans from certain third countries such as Brazil, South Africa and even Portugal.
The Commission’s recommendation aims to coordinate Member States’ actions, but does not prevent them from going further than what is proposed. The recommendation is also non-binding in nature. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)