EU Announces Ban on Most Travelers from US, Russia and Other High-Covid Case Countries

Photo credit: Bertrand Guay, AFP via Getty Images.

The European Union announced on Friday that it will ban most travelers from high-Covid-case countries like the United States, Russia, and dozens of others when it reopens is borders on July 1.

As reported in the New York Times, the EU has compiled a list of safe countries whose citizens will be permitted to enter the region without a quarantine. Notably, travelers from China will be allowed to enter the Union’s 27 member countries if China adheres to reciprocal travel arrangement on visitors from Europe.

“The exclusion of the United States, an important source of tourism to the European Union, represented a stinging rebuke to the Trump administration’s management of the coronavirus scourge,” the Times reports. “European Union officials tried to base their decision on scientific criteria, in part to depoliticize the process and shield themselves from diplomatic pressures. But it’s proven to be difficult, and officials said the United States and other nations had been lobbying intensely to get on the safe list.”

President Donald Trump publicly announced a series of bans on travelers from Europe in March, and the restrictions remain in place, despite the noticeable drop in coronavirus cases across the EU. While the EU’s banned countries list is not legally binding — each nation can set its own travel and immigration rules — member states that don’t go along with the Union’s decision risk having their own European borders subject to additional, onerous restrictions