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
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS