EU States Agree To Ease Travel Restrictions For Vaccinated Non-EU Visitors
Spain News
Published: 20 May 2021 11:05 CET
According to reports, the European Union is ready to reopen its borders once again and allow access into the bloc to vaccinated travellers from third countries. This is another sign that world leaders are working together to enable a ‘return to normality’ after the Covid pandemic.
Christian Wigand, the commission spokesman, said on Wednesday that Ambassadors of the 27 European Union countries have come to an agreement, however, it is yet to be formally adopted by the European Council.
It was something “which we understand will happen very soon”, he said.
The new proposal from May 3, aims “to loosen the criteria to determine ‘safe’ countries and to then let in fully vaccinated tourists from elsewhere”, EU sources said.
A ‘safe list’ is expected to be set up this week or early next week and will be based on data from the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.
Britain and a number of other countries would meet the new criteria.
The latest proposal will allow entry to the European Union for anyone who has received the necessary doses of EU-approved vaccines against COVID-19.
Mr Wigand said "This will help improve international inbound travel and it's possible to do so safely while at the same time ensuring quick action to counter the spread of new virus variants."
One EU diplomat did however say that cases of the Indian variant in Britain would need to be taken into account, however, individual EU countries are already setting their own policies, with Portugal lifting a four-month travel ban on British tourists on Monday.
In March 2020, the EU closed it’s external borders for all "non-essential" travel and from June confirmed a regularly reviewed shortlist of third countries whose residents - vaccinated or not - can enter the bloc.
The current list consists of Australia, China, Israel, New Zealand, Rwanda, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand.
Individual countries can and will continue to be able to demand a negative COVID test or a period of quarantine if they choose to do so.
The EU ambassadors also agreed to loosen the requirements for countries to make this list.
Mr Wigand said “What will be adopted are the criteria for revising the list and also for the other recommendation on making it possible for vaccinated travellers to come to Europe”.
He couldn’t however give an exact timeline on when third country travellers could start visiting the EU but said “we have seen in the past the Council moving very quickly on this”.
At present, the current main criteria is that there should be no more than 25 new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people in the previous 14 days. The trend should be decreasing or at least stable and there should be a sufficient number of tests taken. These tests would also need to show a minimum percentage of negative tests.
New variants of concern can also be taken into account.
The EU Commission proposed raising the case rate to 100 but the EU ambassadors opted for 75 instead. For vaccinated people to gain access, they would need to have received an EU-approved vaccine and with a World Health Organization (WHO) emergency listing being taken into consideration.
These people should have received their final vaccination at least 14 days before they travel.
Under the current plan, EU countries that waiver test or quarantine requirements for EU holidaymakers who have been vaccinated, are also being encouraged to do the same for non - EU tourists who have also been vaccinated.
Children must also be allowed to travel with vaccinated parents.
If any country sees a rise in cases, an emergency brake could be temporarily applied to stop all but essential travel from that particular country. This brake would be used to help limit the risk of more infectious coronavirus variants entering the EU.
At present such a brake has been proposed for India.
The current EU plan covers all countries of the border-free Schengen area and includes non-EU member countries such as Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. It doesn’t however cover the non-Schengen EU member Ireland.
Source
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-countries-agree-ease-travel-restictions-non-eu-visitors-2021-05-19/
https://www.euronews.com/2021/05/19/eu-states-agree-to-allow-entry-to-bloc-for-vaccinated-travellers
