The EU on Friday urged member countries to put health screening procedures in place at their borders to slow the spread of COVID-19, but said they must coordinate so that people can quickly receive the medical care they need.
With Italy reporting the most cases and deaths anywhere in the world except China, the pandemic is increasingly wearing on the EU’s cherished core principle, which envisions a border-free Europe where citizens can freely live, work and travel.
Countries that border Italy, including Austria, Slovenia and Switzerland, have moved to reintroduce border controls and restrict traffic from outside.
Photo: AP
However, several other EU nations, including Poland, Slovakia and Cyprus, announced restrictions that go far beyond travelers from Italy.
Poland’s prime minister said that starting at midnight yesterday, the country’s borders with all its neighbors would be closed and all foreigners denied entry unless they lived in Poland or had personal ties there.
Non-citizens who are let in would be quarantined for 14 days.
Slovakia took similar action.
Denmark on Friday announced that it would shut its borders to most foreign visitors for a month starting yesterday.
An entry ban on foreign nationals in Cyprus only excludes European citizens if they live or work on the island.
More than 22,000 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed across Europe, and nearly 1,300 people with the virus have died.
The EU’s executive commission recommended coordinated border health screenings as a way to address infections.
“We’ve seen travel bans and controls being put in place in a number of member states,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said. “Certain controls may be justified, but general travel bans are not seen as being the most effective by the World Health Organization. Moreover, they have a strong social and economic impact. They disrupt people’s lives and business across the borders.”
To avoid a patchwork of national policies that cause economic harm and are ineffective in guarding public health, “any measure that is taken must be proportionate” and coordinated with Brussels, she said.
Preliminary checks for signs of infection could be done at borders between the 26 nations that make up the passport-free Schengen area, but also at the EU’s external borders and within individual countries, Von der Leyen said.
“Member states, especially neighboring ones, need to work very closely together,” Von der Leyen said. “In this way, and it’s the only way, we can make sure that our citizens receive the healthcare that they need ... wherever they are.”
The European Commission led by von der Leyen polices the Schengen area’s rules, but individual countries are responsible for their own health and public safety policies.
“The problem is on different levels in different countries,” Swedish Minister of the Interior Mikael Damberg told reporters. “We hope that all countries that take new measures also inform other European countries.”
“The transportation system must work when it comes to food and to healthcare materials and these kinds of things that are important to all European countries so that we don’t make problems for each other handling the crisis,” Damberg said.
Croatian Minister of the Interior Davor Bozinovic, who is chairing the talks because his country holds the EU’s rotating presidency, said: “This crisis shows that as a European Union we need to have models to act in a more coordinated way.”
“If we are acting in one way, it would be much better for all of us,” he said.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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