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Despite better COVID record, EU keeps Lanka out of visa list
View(s):Sri Lanka, which is credited with successfully controlling the COVID-19 pandemic, is not on the list of 54 countries whose citizens will benefit from the reopening of the European Union external borders from early next month, an official EU website reported yesterday.
The list included countries which have higher COVID-19 death tolls than Sri Lanka. India which has so far reported 16,096 COVID-19 deaths and 527,994 cases and Canada which has reported 8,516 deaths and 102,954 cases are on the list. Sri Lanka has so far reported 11 deaths from 2,014 cases.
A report on the official Schengen visa site said EU officials had failed to agree on a common list of the countries that would definitely be banned from entering EU nations upon the border reopening but managed to create a list of the countries with a better epidemiological situation. The citizens of these countries will be able to enter Europe by the end of next week.
“The European Union has an internal process to determine from which countries it would be safe to accept travellers,” EU Commission spokesman Eric Mamer said, adding that its decisions were “based on health criteria.”
The report said that citizens of Brazil, Qatar, the US and Russia would only be able to enter Europe at a later date when the epidemiological situation in these countries improved.