Filenews 1 November 2021
We are very close to the change of the criteria or the abolition of the institution with the travel rules, agreed in the EU, due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the Minister of Health, Michalis Hadjipandelas, said today.
Asked, after the meeting of the House Standing Committee on Finance on the budget of his Ministry for 2022, why since Cyprus has the lowest rate of transmissibility it is always on the red list, Mr. Chatzipandelas explained that before taking over the Ministry of Health, the EU with some criteria has decided to categorise the countries.
As he said, "unfortunately the criteria chosen for the categorization of these countries are not very good for Cyprus", to note that this is why Cyprus is constantly in the red.
He said that recently on his own initiative he had asked the competent European agency to change the criteria or abolish this institution.
Moreover, he said that he considers that "we are very close either to change the criteria or to abolish it", noting that "this has been done on the initiative of our own country".
It is noted that this system was put in place during the ongoing pandemic and is based on the colours of a traffic light, for the classification of EU countries (EU-27 + Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland) according to their epidemiological situation (infection rate).
