EU borders to stay shut to Ukrainian travelers

Ukrainian travelers won’t be among those allowed to visit the European Union for at least two weeks due to the high number of active cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 members of the population in the country. 

The European Council endorsed a list of 15 travel partners outside the Schengen zone on July 1, including China, where the novel coronavirus originated. Yet the EU decided to only offer China entry on the condition of reciprocal agreements. 

The other countries are Algeria, Australia, Canada, Georgia, Japan, Montenegro, Morocco, New Zealand, Rwanda, Serbia, South Korea, Thailand, Tunisia and Uruguay. These countries have been able to bring COVID-19 under control.

The EU revised the list July 16, but decided not to add a single new country. Moreover, Serbia and Montenegro were excluded — their residents were only allowed to enter from July 1 to July 15. 

“The criteria to determine the third countries for which the current travel restriction should be lifted cover, in particular, the epidemiological situation and containment measures, including physical distancing, as well as economic and social considerations,” the EU Council said in the decision. “They are applied cumulatively”.

The list is included in a set of recommendations from the European Council to member states. The recommendations set out criteria for countries to meet before their residents can enter the bloc and the methodology for meeting that criteria. These standards require that the infection rate in third countries be equal to or better than the EU and show a stable or decreasing trend of new cases over this period in comparison to the previous 14 days. 

Ukraine does not meet these requirements. At the moment, there are 26,079 active cases in the country. In three regions, the number of cases per 100,000 population is more than two hundred — Lviv oblast (246,1), Chernivets’ka oblast (212,4) and Zakarpatska oblast (208,8).

Read more: Health Minister Stepanov: Ukraine to extend quarantine, change rules

Border control, however, is ultimately decided by each member state, rather than at an EU level in Brussels. To that end, Greece unilaterally closed its borders to Serbia on July 6 due to the worsening epidemiological situation there. 

The EU says that this list is revised and, depending on the circumstances, updated every two weeks. The European Union closed its external border in March after seeing its COVID-19 infection rates grow exponentially.