As Europe shuts its borders, 80,000 nationals wait to return home

BRUSSELS • An estimated 80,000 European Union nationals around the world were waiting to return amid the coronavirus pandemic that has prompted its leaders to close its external borders for 30 days, the European Commission said yesterday.

The move to ban travellers outside the bloc, announced on Tuesday, is the most significant emergency measure yet from the EU, which has scrambled to come up with a unified response to the deadly disease sweeping the continent.

"From what (the member states) have registered, the number we are working with now... is approximately 80,000 outside the EU," a commission spokesman said yesterday, as he appealed for EU nationals to contact their consulates to enable better estimates.

The European bloc's 27 leaders had met by video conference to agree on the ban on non-essential travel to the EU - an idea strongly backed by France, hoping to persuade member states that they need not close doors to one another.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen had proposed that the bloc's Schengen passport-free zone impose the measure - a drastic and unprecedented move - and that fellow EU states outside the zone follow suit.

The ban will be in effect for an initial 30 days and will not affect Europeans returning home, cross-border and social workers, or citizens of former EU member Britain.

The lockdown will be up to each country to impose as the bloc does not have the ability to enforce it.

Each member state can tweak the restrictions on whom it might allow in, and under what conditions.

"It is up to them now to implement," Mrs von der Leyen said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said states "agreed to impose an entry ban" into the bloc, with only nationals of closely aligned European Free Trade Association countries, such as Norway or Iceland, as well as Britain, exempted.

"Germany will implement it immediately," said the leader of Europe's biggest economy, which had initially closed its national borders.

Sweden's Minister for Home Affairs Mikael Damberg said: "This is an exceptional measure that should not last longer than necessary."

The ban comes as EU countries have unilaterally adopted various policies to slow the spread of the virus. Several EU nations have closed their frontiers or imposed screening controls that slow cross-border freight traffic, despite calls for a single European plan.

Italy, Spain, France and now Belgium have opted for widespread lockdowns, ordering citizens to stay at home for all but essential trips, while the Netherlands has taken a looser stance, hoping to build collective immunity.

The EU's Mrs von der Leyen, a trained doctor, said the stricter measures were "fully approved" by a panel of experts.

"We want people... not to have contact with each other so that we can reduce... the pressure on the health sector and the patients that have to be treated," she said.

The EU leaders also discussed the devastating economic fallout from the crisis, but held off from any pan-European response. Fixing the economy has so far been limited to government spending, as well as liquidity by the European Central Bank, which announced a series of measures but no rate cut last week.

Following the travel ban, Italian newspaper La Stampa reported yesterday that the country's Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte might extend the national lockdown beyond April 3, as cases continued to climb in the worst-hit European state.

In France, Health Minister Olivier Veran said the country might start to see its number of new cases level out after eight to 12 days of confinement measures.

In Germany, the Robert Koch Institute warned that the nation could have up to 10 million infections in two to three months if residents did not abide by its stringent social distancing measures in place.

Germany would also be seeking to double its intensive respiratory care capacity to cope with the escalating outbreak, a government spokesman said yesterday.

REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, BLOOMBERG, NYTIMES