Closing borders anew would be a "mistake" and would have "great consequences for the EU's credibility" and the health sector in Luxembourg, says Jean Asselborn.

"Closing the intra-EU borders in 2020 was a mistake and it would be even worse to do it in 2021,"  the Luxembourg Minister of Foreign Affairs told German public radio station Deutschlandfunk. "Like last spring, it would have great consequences for the credibility of the European Union", he said.

His warning came just a few hours before the EU summit on Thursday evening on the fight against the pandemic in light of the new variants. On the agenda: limiting cross-border movements, accelerating the vaccination programmes, implementing a shared certificate, among other things.

Asselborn stressed that he wasn't talking about tourism, but cross-border workers. Around 50,000 people commute daily from Germany, the same number from Belgium and around 100,000 from France.

If the borders are closed to them, "the Luxembourgish health system will collapse", as "60% of people working in the medical sector come in from abroad", he said. Asselborn reminded listeners of the EU's promise that everyone could work freely in every other member country.

"THIS IS PART OF OUR DAILY LIFE"

The Minister further stressed that within the EU, "30% of the population lives in border areas. If you live in Paris or Berlin, you may have to deal with borders twice or three times a year. For us, this is daily life."

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Xavier Bettel had spoken to German chancellor Angela Merkel and Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo about this very issue.

The same day, France had raised the idea of "health checks" at its borders. Angela Merkel, too, did not want to exclude border checks if neighbouring countries did not take sufficient measures to combat the new and more contagious Coronavirus variants.