EU health officials have so far failed to agree on whether to require COVID-19 tests for travelers arriving from China.

Italy on Thursday urged the rest of the European Union to follow its lead and test travelers from China for COVID, but others said they saw no need to do so for now or were waiting for a common stance across the largely borderless bloc.

This was not the first time EU countries were split on COVID-19 policies. At the start of the pandemic there was much debate on what to do, and heated competition to buy safety equipment, before member states pulled together and successfully placed – and shared – joint vaccine orders.

READ MORE

The Secret Betrayal: China's WWII sailors

Why are UK nurses on strike?

Austria's Krampus parades too violent to insure

Italy "expects and hopes" that the EU will impose mandatory COVID-19 tests for all passengers flying in from China like Rome did, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni told a news conference.

In the EU, so far only Italy has ordered COVID-19 antigen swabs for all travelers coming from China. 

The main airport in the Italian city of Milan started testing passengers arriving from Beijing and Shanghai on December 26.

But earlier on Thursday, Brigitte Autran, head of the French health risk assessment committee COVARS, said: "From a scientific point of view, there is no reason at this stage to bring back controls at the borders."

Germany and Portugal have also said they saw no need for new travel restrictions, while Austria has stressed the economic benefits of Chinese tourists' return to Europe.

Norway, which is not an EU member but is part of the bloc's border-free deal, was taking a similar approach.

"We likely have several hundred thousand people getting COVID-19 in Norway every week now," Professor Preben Aavitsland of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health wrote on Twitter. "A few hundred extra cases among travelers from China would be a drop in the ocean."

Elsewhere in Europe, Britain has also said it did not plan to bring back COVID-19 testing for those coming into the country.

The EU health committee, made of officials from health ministries across the bloc and chaired by the Commission, ended its meeting with a call for a united stance.

"We need to act jointly and will continue our discussions," the European Commission tweeted, without specifying when talks would resume.

The re-opening of borders with China raises the prospect of Chinese tourists returning to shopping streets around the world, once a market worth an annual $255 billion globally.