Coronavirus: EU aims to allow external travellers in from early July
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson said that most governments would lift internal border controls by June 15.
PHOTO: AFP
Follow topic:
BRUSSELS • The European Union will not fully open internal borders before the end of this month, meaning that restrictions on travel to and from other countries will only start easing next month, EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson said on Friday.
She told a news conference after a video call among EU and Schengen zone interior ministers that most governments would lift internal border controls by June 15, but that some were not ready to do so until the end of the month.
"So that means that (all) internal border controls are lifted by the end of June, I guess. We should consider the gradual lifting of restrictions on non-essential travel to the EU (in) early July," Ms Johansson said.
The curb on non-essential travel to the bloc is due to lapse on June 15, after being introduced in mid-March for 30 days and extended twice as Europe stepped up the fight against the coronavirus.
The Schengen zone, which normally has no border controls between most EU states and some neighbours outside it, has banned non-essential visitors from elsewhere in response to the virus outbreak.
But delays in opening some individual national frontiers meant that most governments now believe a two-week extension was necessary, Ms Johansson said.
The Schengen area comprises 22 EU countries and Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.
EU members Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus and Romania, which are not yet part of the Schengen zone, have also applied the ban on entry from outside the area.
Belgian Interior Minister Pieter De Crem tweeted that a majority of Schengen countries had agreed to lift border controls by June 15, but Spain had not.
Europe is seeking to balance competing desires to revive domestic economies as the summer tourist season gets under way and to guard against a second wave of infections.
The governments did not determine on Friday which nationals from non-Schengen and non-EU countries would be allowed in first.
But they were clear that external travellers would be able to travel once again throughout the Schengen area and not face internal border controls.
Italy, the original European epicentre of the virus outbreak, urged EU countries to act in unison on kick-starting travel across the bloc after the government in Rome ended a national lockdown last week.
"Tourism is a fundamental sector for our economies and for the single market on which we need to maintain a shared and European approach," Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio told reporters in Berlin on Friday after talks with his German counterpart, Mr Heiko Maas.
REUTERS, BLOOMBERG
