This recommendation must then be endorsed by states at the level of ministers or their ambassadors in Brussels. Italy, Spain and France had already made the decision unilaterally to restore restrictions at the entrance of their territory.
mo12345lemonde with AFP
The European Union (EU) “strongly encourages” its member states, Wednesday, January 4, after a meeting of the integrated system for a political reaction in crisis situations (IPCR), to be rendered Compulsory tests before departure for travelers from China, a country faced with an outbreak of unprecedented Covid-19 cases after its sudden abandonment of the strict policy of zero covid.
At the end of a meeting of health and internal affairs experts of the twenty-seven, the IPCR has formulated this recommendation, which must then be endorsed by states at the level of ministers or their ambassadors to Brussels. A “overwhelming majority” of the member states was favorable to this measure, which was one of the proposals made Tuesday by the health security committee (HSC).
EU members also agreed on other recommendations: the obligation to carry the mask for passengers, random tests on arrival or even control of wastewater for airports and planes from China. Worried about the lack of transparency as to the data provided by the Chinese authorities and fearing the appearance of new variants, the Europeans reacted in dispersed order: Italy and Spain have unilaterally imposed tests on arrival for passengers in from China, while France will demand, as of Thursday, a negative test of less than forty-eight hours when they depart.
China condemned these restrictions imposed by a growing number of countries around the world on Tuesday, warning that it could take “countermeasures” in retaliation. “Our approach is based on science (…). We take the measures that we consider justified, adapted to the evolution of the situation in China, and based on discussions between our experts,” said a spokesperson for a spokesperson on Wednesday the Commission. If the member states will remain free to apply the recommendations adopted at the EU level, “everyone understands that if we do not act together, there will be holes in the device,” added another carrier Word.
The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), one of the EU health agencies, had judged last week that a systematic screening for travelers was “unjustified” in view of the level of Collective immunity in Europe and the presence on this continent of the same variants as in China. Also pointing to the lack of “reliable” Chinese statistics, the ECDC said again, on Tuesday, that the explosion of infections in China “should not have an impact on the epidemiological situation in Europe”.