BRUSSELS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 25th June, 2020) With the European Union desperate to reopen its borders for business and tourism, the decision about the manner or permissions is unlikely to be a smooth or efficient affair.
European officials spent most of Wednesday behind closed doors in heated debates about which countries to allow in, which to not, and by what metrics. Brussels gave itself a deadline to present a coherent reopening plan for July 1.
"The idea is to only allow in, the travelers from countries where the situation is better or equivalent to that in Europe, looked at as a whole," one European Commission spokesman told Sputnik.
Drips of information from the discussions have trickled to the media, with many reporting that the United States, Brazil and Russia are likely to remain barred from Europe for the time being.
The strategy currently closest to consensus, according to the New York Times, is to rank the world's non-EU nations by new cases for every 100,000 in a population over the past 14 days. Those that show levels below or similar to the EU as a whole � 16 per 100,000 � will be allowed entry. No official confirmation has yet been made.
The prospect of barring the United States citizens from Europe while allowing those from Vietnam entry may serve a hard blow to US-EU ties.
Boasting the two largest economies, European nations bereft of US tourists paints a dreary picture even if the rest of the world's tourists flock to the old continent.
The spending power of US tourists and the predictable desire for convenience while abroad has perfected European hospitality to an art form.
US President Donald Trump's protectionist and image-obsessed conduct may deliver a harmful blowback to the EU in areas unrelated to tourism. Trump's attitude toward the European project as a whole has been extensively documented.
Mark Van Ranst, an epidemiologist at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium and a member of the Belgian Risk Assessment Group for COVID-19, believes the final list of banned countries is likely to include the US and that such a decision is far from political.
"If you ask my advice as an expert, I say no. It is too early to re-open the borders on July 1 to travelers from the USA or South America, where the epidemic is spreading for the time being. The European Commission experts ... I am sure, will come to the same conclusion, I think. This medical decision should not be politicized," Va Ranst told Sputnik.
By the proposed metric of measurement, Brussels may be banking on its eastern expansions over the past two decades. Although 16 is the number of new infections in the past week per 100,000 across the entire EU, such numbers for the badly infected western European nations are difficult to come by.
It is unlikely that the bulk of tourists will be pining for a visit to Slovakia, Poland or Lithuania, where the cases are much lower than in their more prestigious co-bloc nations.
Spain, Italy, France and Germany are still highly prone to new infection clusters. If the continent will be dotted with sporadic lockdowns as the one seen earlier this week in Germany's North Rhine-Westphalia, can the countries truly be considered "open for business"?
