BRUSSELS —
Europe is looking at easing travel restrictions
on foreign tourists as early as next month, if they are fully vaccinated or
come from a country with coronavirus under control, officials said on Monday.
اضافة اعلان
The European Commission is recommending EU member states
agree to restart the bloc’s vital tourist industry in time for the European
summer after a wipe-out season last year when travel plummeted worldwide.
“Time to revive the EU tourism industry and for cross-border
friendships to rekindle — safely,” commission chief Ursula von der Leyen
tweeted.
But there are caveats. Brussels is seeking to ensure the
EU’s rapidly accelerating vaccination rollout is not threatened by new virus
variants, and that there is reciprocity for Europeans going abroad.
The commission statement said vaccinated people arriving in
the EU on “non-essential travel” would need to have received EU-approved jabs,
currently those from
BioNTech/Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Johnson &
Johnson.
Even if they are fully immunized — meaning having received
two doses, except for the single-jab Johnson & Johnson vaccine, then
waiting two weeks for them to be fully effective — EU countries can still
require coronavirus tests, quarantine or even both.
Then there is an “emergency brake” allowing EU countries to
halt arrivals from where a “variant of concern or interest is detected”, such
as those spreading in Brazil, India, and South Africa.
“Even vaccinated persons would be subject to the travel
restrictions coming from these countries subject to this emergency brake,” said
a commission spokesman, Adalbert Jahnz.
Infection rate
In terms of how the EU would judge whether other countries
are doing a good enough job in curbing coronavirus, the key metric would be
their infection rate per 100,000 inhabitants averaged over two weeks.
An EU official involved in drafting the recommendation told
journalists an old threshold of 25 infections per 100,000 fixed nearly a year
ago would be raised to 100 to reflect “a different reality” because of
increasing vaccinations.
Consequently, the EU’s list of acceptable countries could
expand from seven at the moment — Australia, New Zealand, Rwanda, Singapore,
South Korea, and Thailand; and China with a thus-far-unmet reciprocity
condition — to many more.
Last week, von der Leyen told the New York Times she expected
many Americans to be able to return to the EU as tourists for summer, given the
US vaccination program.
European countries are keen to welcome back big-spending
American tourists under the eased travel restrictions, though the EU official
speaking to journalists said the US must first “put its own house in order”.
He said he hoped to see “a gradual convergence” of vaccine
certificate registration in the US to overcome the current fragmented situation
of US states issuing many different certificates, making verification difficult
internationally.
The International Tourism Organization and the World Health
Organization (
WHO) were working on certification that would be accepted
globally, he noted.
UK ‘question mark’
Closer to Europe, there is a “question mark” about how
former EU member Britain, which has strained relations with Brussels
post-Brexit, might benefit from the bloc’s easing of rules.
The EU official acknowledged that “the figures for the UK
are good”, with a vaccination rollout that got a head start on the EU’s and a
relatively low infection rate.
But, he stressed, there is “the issue of reciprocity”, which
will have to be mulled over collectively by the EU member states.
Britain currently requires arrivals from countries other
than EU member Ireland, with which it shares a common travel arrangement, to
quarantine.
The British government this week is to give a list of
countries it deems acceptable for travel to without quarantine, but is expected
to keep many EU countries on its quarantine list.
Russian, Chinese jabs excluded
While the European Commission recommendation talks about
vaccines approved by the European Medicines Agency, it says other
coronavirus-19 vaccines accepted by the WHO for emergency-use jabs may be added
later.
As it stands, though, neither Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine nor
ones made by China would be included, excluding jabs that are used in dozens of
lower-income countries.
That goes in the same direction of the EU’s planned “digital
green certificate” which is also to be launched next month for Europeans to be
able to travel more freely within the bloc.
That document will not only show the vaccination status of
the bearer, but also recent negative coronavirus test results, and immunity
acquired while recovering from a coronavirus infection.
Read more
region & world
.jpg)
.jpg)
