The Twenty-Seven have concluded this Wednesday without agreement a new meeting in Brussels to try to define the list of third countries to allow already next July 1 to cross the EU border - closed since March due to the coronavirus -, reason why the discussions will continue at technical and political level what remains of the week.

The ambassadors of the member states have concluded several hours of meeting without agreement, but the contacts will probably continue this Thursday in the technical group of response to the crisis of the coronavirus and the ambassadors will resume the debate on Friday.

In any case, the commitment of the Member States is to establish "clear epidemiological" criteria that allow the list to be narrowed down according to health and scientific issues and not as a consequence of political decisions, so that the border begins to open to countries where the extent of the pandemic is at "EU levels", as reported by Europa Press to European sources.

This would leave countries such as the United States, Brazil or Russia out of the first list, where the level of infections is still very high with respect to registrations in Europe; But it could open the door to the western Balkans - as requested by Brussels - or other countries that, like Morocco, offer reassuring data but are in no rush to resume transit to the EU.

Short listing

The first objective is to establish a "short" list of countries to reactivate non-EU transit as early as next Wednesday, knowing that it is not a closed list, but rather a list of countries that will be periodically reviewed to align it at all times with the situation. sanitary.

The review period is one of the issues that are still under negotiation, but "the most favorable option for now" is the one that sets the deadline to re-evaluate the situation in two weeks. They must also agree on the procedure for evaluating and validating the changes in the list, because the partners are clear that "it will not be an automatic process."

It is also clear to the EU countries that the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) should have a fundamental role in providing the epidemiological data that will be taken into account, although it is not clear if it will have weight Time to validate the final list or it will be a sole decision of the Member States, which have exclusive powers in the field of border management.

EPIDEMIOLOGICAL CRITERIA

All the sources consulted mention that on the table there are epidemiological criteria such as the number of infections per 100,000 inhabitants in the last fourteen days, the trend of the contagion curve in the last days or the degree of reliability of the data provided by each country. third.

However, questions such as the thresholds of these criteria, the weight that each of them should have when establishing the classification, or whether other factors must come into play in the control of the pandemic, such as the capacity of third countries to carry out , remain to be defined. test, trace infections or the quality of their health systems.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas suggested in statements to the press on Tuesday that a threshold of 50 infections per 100,000 inhabitants could be an option, but this Wednesday his Spanish colleague, Arancha González Laya, warned that there was no consensus at respect.

"Some think that 50 is too high, that it should be closer to 20, others think that it is too modest, we are going to leave a little time for discussion," explained the head of Spanish diplomacy.

Another issue for the Twenty-Seven to decide is the exceptions they will accept to allow minimal transit with countries to which the border will not yet open to allow travel in exceptional situations, as is already the case, for example, to allow the return of European citizens or relatives of these.

The European Commission has asked that this list of exceptions be expanded to include, among others, the arrival of students, but this issue is also pending discussion.

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