LISBON (Reuters) – Portugal’s Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that some European Union member states had damaged a pact to repair the bloc’s internal freedom of movement after the opposite blockade of coronaviruses was lifted.
“We felt that we were all obliged to repair the freedom of movement within the EU by 1 July,” the ministry said in an envoy to Reuters.
“We believe that the restrictions and decisions that are taken through Member States with respect to other Member States obviously do not take this link into account,” he added, without specifying which Member States he was referring to.
The ministry’s comments came after Britain, which left the EU in January but complied with its industry and regulations until the end of the year, made the decision on Friday to maintain a quarantine regime for citizens of Portugal.
This has severely affected tourism-dependents.
Other European countries, besides Ireland, Belgium and Finland, all members of the EU, have also imposed restrictions on Portugal. Spain also faces around 40 in the UK and warnings from other countries.
Portugal was first praised for its immediate reaction to the pandemic, but a normal count of several hundred new cases a day in and around Lisbon over the next two months has concerned domestic and foreign authorities.
Portugal, which has continuously attributed the new reported cases to its maximum rate of evidence, has expressed fears about the restrictions imposed on the European Commission and the European Council, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
A European Commission spokesman said Tuesday that “the reinstatement of unsusable restrictions and controls at the EU’s internal borders must have prevented progress.”
He added: “Any restriction on freedom of movement within the EU will only be used where it is strictly mandatory and coordinated, proportionate and non-discriminatory to address the risks of public fitness.”
Reporting through Catarina Demony; Additional report through Gabriela Baczynska in Brussels; Editing through Ingrid Melander and Jan Harvey
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