[Asia Economy Reporter Park Byung-hee] The European Union (EU) plans not to accept travelers coming from Japan, Bloomberg News reported on the 26th (local time), due to a sharp increase in confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Japan.
Bloomberg cited EU officials saying that EU governments plan to exclude Japan from the list of countries allowed to visit their territories.
Earlier this month, Japan declared a state of emergency in 11 regions including the metropolitan area as daily new COVID-19 cases reached the 7,000 range. As of the 26th, the number of daily new cases decreased to 3,853, but the spread remains severe.
The EU official said that while updating the "white list," which is the list of countries whose travelers can visit the EU region, most countries including the United States will be excluded from this list.
Accordingly, only seven countries remain on the white list: South Korea, Australia, China, New Zealand, Rwanda, Singapore, and Thailand.
To prevent the spread of COVID-19, the EU introduced travel bans in mid-March last year to block non-essential entry of third-country nationals into the EU. However, as the spread of COVID-19 slowed down, the European Commission, the EU's executive body, recommended member states partially lift entry restrictions on travelers from non-EU countries starting July 1 last year.
Accordingly, EU member states consider criteria such as the COVID-19 situation, trends in new confirmed cases, and response measures to create and review every two weeks the list of countries recommended for lifting travel restrictions, i.e., the white list.
The EU Council is scheduled to approve the new white list excluding Japan at a meeting held in Brussels, Belgium, on the 27th.
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