Ross Clark Ross Clark

Can the EU really complain about Trump’s ‘unscientific’ travel ban?

Yes, of course Donald Trump’s ban on travel between the US and the Schengen zone is an over-reaction to coronavirus, which will do far more harm to the economy than it will to protect the health of Americans. But it is pretty rich for the EU to be bleating about others banning things without scientific justification. 

The EU has protested bitterly about the American ban, complaining it was introduced unilaterally without consultation. Guy Verhofstadt tweets: ‘Instead of a travel ban for Europeans Trump should make a decent health care system that works for Americans.’ The usual anti-Trumpites have weighed in with their ha’porth of wisdom, with Simon Schama calling the travel ban ‘an idiotic and purely political stunt’.

The EU lives and breathes the precautionary principle. Why should it be surprised when others act the same way?

I don’t, as it happens, disagree with Verhofstadt: if I was American I would want a proper, universal public health system. But it is absurd for the EU to complain about other people banning things. This is the same organisation that all but drove research into genetically-modified crops away from Europe; that made it hard to conduct fracking within its borders and that bans chlorinated chicken for no scientific reason, because it doesn’t want US chicken-farmers competing with its own. The EU lives and breathes by the precautionary principle. So why should its leaders be so upset and surprised when others decide to act in the same way?

What has Verhofstadt had to say about Italy’s decision to ‘lock down’ its entire country, closing every bar, restaurant and shop except for food and chemists, and imprisoning people in their homes? ‘A message of support to all the Italians,’ he announced yesterday. ‘The rest of Europe is thinking of you and wishes that Italy can go back to normal life as soon as possible.’

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