- According to the information provided by the European Union Foreign Policy Officer, Josep Borrell, 350,000 Europeans have been repatriated since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis, while another 250,000 have been stagnating in different parts of the world. Commercial and military aircraft are being used to bring passengers to their home countries.
The outbreak of covid-19 has unexpectedly left the crowd on the other side of the fence without being able to cross borders. But the current crisis has a particularity: many of them are Europeans, who worked as tourists or in the short term throughout the world. The European Union’s Foreign Policy Officer, Josep Borrell, said that some 250,000 people would still be in this situation, according to the newspaper The Guardian.
Following the videoconference with EU Foreign Ministers, Borrell has clarified that not all these people are people who live abroad in the long term, but tourists who have been trapped in a third country for the most part. Since the beginning of the confinements and the closure of borders with the coronavirus crisis, some 350,000 tourists have been repatriated.
As you have explained, the European countries are helping each other so that commercial or military aircraft can re-operate and make it easier for those people to return. Civil protection resources, used in accidents or disasters, have also been used for 10,000 people.
This figure represents almost half of the refugee migrants in Lesbos, some 20,000 on the Greek island, although the latter remain in a very different situation.