Grounded by Trump
By Michael
Peel
March 13,
2020
Hundreds of
millions of European citizens and residents will wake up tomorrow under a US
travel ban imposed by President Donald Trump in an effort to halt the spread of
coronavirus. The shutout has dismayed European leaders — and provoked a barrage
of questions that threaten to stoke transatlantic tensions.
Trump’s
dictum prohibits journeys stateside by anyone who has been in Europe’s
26-country Schengen passport-free travel zone during the preceding two weeks.
The measure, which exempts US citizens, legal residents and limited other
categories of people, comes into force at the end of Friday US east coast
time.
The
sweeping order blindsided the Europeans when Trump unveiled it on Wednesday. A
joint statement from Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and European
Council chief Charles Michel yesterday deplored the way Washington took its
decision “unilaterally and without consultation”. European diplomats were much
less polite in private.
The impact
is big because the Schengen area covers much of continental Europe and includes
22 EU members, among them populous countries such as Germany, France, Spain,
Italy and Poland. It also includes non-EU members Switzerland, Norway, Iceland
and Liechtenstein.
The first
of what many Europeans argue are serious flaws and inconsistencies in the ban
is that the focus on Schengen exempts other countries apparently arbitrarily.
It’s true
that a large proportion of confirmed coronavirus cases are in the Schengen
zone, including more than 12,000 in Italy, and a combined total of more than
6,500 in France, Spain and Germany. But there are also cases in non-Schengen
countries: the UK, for example, has more than 450 confirmed, while Ireland and
Romania each have more than 40.
A
particular source of European ire is the special treatment for the UK after
Brexit, which Trump supports. Former Finnish premier Alexander Stubb branded
the British exemption political and “nothing short of irresponsible”.
Then there
are what promise to be big practical problems in enforcing the ban. It is not
yet clear, for example, what would stop someone from hopping on the Eurostar
train from continental Europe to London and then flying to the US from Heathrow
airport.
US
immigration can conduct its own checks, but for verification purposes it might
need non-Schengen European countries to share information on the previous
travel records of those flying to the US. There could be legal obstacles to
this in regulatory areas such as data protection, while the checking process
would be likely to consume vast amounts of official resources and time.
A further
potential obstacle to the ban’s effectiveness is the carve-out for US
nationals, non-US family members and other foreigners with connections to the
country. It appears they will be able to shuttle back and forth across the
Atlantic freely, mingling with the very Europeans who are targeted as a health
risk and kept out.
The EU has
enough to worry about in finding effective measures of its own to combat the
pandemic, against a background of questions as to why the emergency response
has varied so widely between countries. Now, as in many other areas of
political life, Trump promises to make an existing European headache worse.
michael.peel@ft.com;
@mikepeeljourno
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