EU and the freedom of movement during pandemic

As part of efforts to contain the spread of the virus that has already caused over 2.1 million deaths globally and of its even more contagious mutated variants, European Union leaders called for non-essential travel between countries to be limited, describing the situation as "very serious". The talks held by the 27 EU leaders in videoconference format highlighted the common wish of the bloc's countries to coordinate among themselves while ensuring the functioning of the single market and the transport of goods. They also looked at the situation of cross-border workers, as part of efforts to prevent situations like those seen last spring when the lack of harmonised decisions led to significant disruptions.

The president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said EU is increasingly worried about the different mutations of the virus. Citing the recommendations of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, she said all non-essential travel should be strongly discouraged. She also spoke about a new definition of risk zones to include territories from a number of member states where health measures should be coordinated. The virus doesn't know about borders, von der Leyen explained:

"You can have an area where there is, on both sides, in two member states close to each other, the same epidemiological situation, but if in one half of this zone you do a strong lockdown and in the other half of this zone you keep shops open, you will have immediately movement of people to the other side to do shopping, for example. That's pushing forward the spread of the virus and the dissemination of the virus. So, it is smart to look at homogeneous areas and there have targeted measures that the member states then can in coordination apply to make sure that we contain the spread of the virus as much as possible and on the other hand keep the flow in the single market as much as possible open."

Travellers from high-risk epidemiological zones may be subject to obligatory testing and quarantine. As for countries from outside the EU, additional security measures are proposed for essential travel to Europe, such as testing before departure, von der Leyen also said. On the eve of the summit, EU leaders also reached an agreement on the mutual recognition of the results of tests, both PCR and rapid antigen tests. The community bloc also aims to increase by at least 15% the verification of positive Covid tests to detect possible mutations. Additionally, member states stood for stepping up vaccination campaigns while ensuring constant and predictable vaccine deliveries, aiming to vaccinate 70% of the bloc's adult population by summer. (CM)