LONDON – People in Algeria, Rwanda, Uruguay, China and Canada can now travel to parts of Europe on vacation. Travelers from the United States are not.
At first glance, it appears that the European Union has chosen a diverse team of 15 countries whose residents are now officially allowed non-essential travel to their member countries, something that has been restricted since mid-March.
In fact, Europeans say this exclusive club was designed using a strict set of epidemiological criteria.
That is why the United States, which has the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the world, was not close to making the cut, according to three EU diplomats involved in the negotiations, speaking anonymously because they were not authorized to speak publicly. about them.
“What you think?” one of them was impassive when asked if Washington had been close to reaching the threshold.
“The United States would never do it,” said another. “Just look at his coronavirus situation.”
Therefore, it is not surprising that the list includes locations praised worldwide for successfully tackling COVID-19, including New Zealand, Australia, South Korea, Thailand, and Japan.
Despite registering more than 8,600 coronavirus deaths, Canada’s recently reported cases are declining and overall the same as the European average, making it also listed.
The club also features countries least recognized for its pandemic response: Tunisia, Uruguay, Serbia, Montenegro, Morocco, Rwanda, Algeria, and Georgia, a nation that borders Russia and Turkey. But they all met the EU criteria.
China, where the outbreak is believed to have started, says it has had fewer than 400 cases in the past two weeks. It is the last country on the list, provided that it allows entry to EU citizens in return.
A clear omission, at least from a political and economic perspective, is the United States.
Indeed, Washington’s blackball will deny European cities the opportunity to take advantage of the hordes of lucrative American tourists, and risks a verbal confrontation between the European governments and President Donald Trump.
During nearly a month of talks, there was little or no suggestion that the United States could be included, the three EU diplomats said.
If that’s disappointing for American vacationers, it can be overwhelming for a European tourism sector that welcomes more Americans than almost any other country, according to the European Tourism Association, a London-based trade body.
“In 2019, for example, we saw around 18 million American visitors entering Europe and spent approximately 70 billion euros (about $ 78 million),” said Tom Jenkins, the association’s CEO.
While Americans don’t tend to flock to Europe’s Mediterranean coast, Jenkins said they dominate tourism for cities like Paris and Milan, all of which will feel more pain after Tuesday’s decision.
The Europeans said that these economic considerations never entered their discussions.
“If we were to start talking about making exceptions for countries that offer a lot of tourism, even if they have a lot of coronavirus cases, that would not be the right approach,” said an EU diplomat.
When asked about reports last week that the US would likely be excluded from the final list, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a briefing that the US had been working with his “friends in Europe and the EU itself to determine how we can be better safe to reopen international travel. “
While he said it was “very important” for the American and European economies to reconnect, he did not want to reopen in a way “that would endanger the United States” and “we do not want to cause problems anywhere else.” “
None of the European negotiators brought up the specific countries they wanted to include, but instead outlined the criteria first before seeing which nations fit them, diplomats said.
The first hurdle that countries had to approve was having the same or fewer new cases of coronavirus than the European average, which stands at approximately 15 per 100,000 people in the last 14 days.
By contrast, the US had around 145 cases per 100,000 people during that time, according to EU data, exceeding the threshold nearly 10 times.
As many as 54 countries overcame that initial hurdle, according to a draft list seen by NBC News during negotiations last week.
That dropped after Europeans looked at whether infections in each country were increasing or decreasing, and how trustworthy their government was on other issues, such as accurate reporting, testing, surveillance, and social distancing.
For example, the Central Asian nation of Tajikistan says its coronavirus infection rate is declining and below the European average. So he made the initial list of 54 nations, along with India, Turkey, Cuba, Venezuela, and dozens of others.
But according to that list, Tajikistan and many others have a relatively low IHR score, relative to the International Health Regulations established by the World Health Organization, which analyzes a series of other factors related to the health system of a country.
When all these criteria were aligned, the final list of 15 was left standing, finally agreed by the EU ambassadors late on Friday and confirmed and presented on Tuesday.
An EU spokesman declined to comment on why the additional reciprocity criteria had been applied to China. But two EU diplomats involved in the negotiations said this additional layer was included due to continued skepticism among some European countries about the difficult to verify accuracy of China’s coronavirus data.
The final list means that any non-EU citizen living in a country that is not on the list will not be able to enter until the situation in which they live changes. Exceptions include health workers, diplomats, military personnel, or anyone with a family matter who can prove it is urgent.
But that is not the end.
Cracks are already beginning to appear in European unity with Italy, one of the countries most affected by the coronavirus, saying that within a few hours of the announcement it would choose to leave the non-binding list. Only members of the 26-member Schengen Area, which allows travel without a passport within Europe, will be able to go there, he said.
“The global situation is still very complex,” said Italian Health Minister Roberto Speranza. “We must prevent the sacrifices made by the Italians in recent months from being in vain.”
