EU recommends lifting restrictions on US travellers

The European Union is recommending adding the United States to the list of countries from which restrictions on non-essential travel should be lifted. The move was adopted during a meeting, 16 June, in Brussels of permanent representatives to the 27-nation bloc. The EU has no unified Covid border policy, but has been working on a joint digital travel certificate for those vaccinated, freshly tested, or recently recovered from the virus. Travel into the EU from the US was all but suspended throughout most of the pandemic. The recommendation for US travellers is non-binding, and individual national governments still have authority to demand test results or vaccination records and to set entry conditions. Some EU countries have already started allowing in American visitors and Belgium’s Prime Minister Alexander De Croo has said a phased-in approach should remain the rule. “Let’s look at science and let’s look at the progress. Let’s look at the numbers and when it’s safe, we will do it,” De Croo said. “The moment that we see that a big part of the population is double-vaccinated and can prove that they are safe, travel will pick up again. And I would expect that over the course of this summer.” At their meeting on 16 June the EU representatives  added five other countries — North Macedonia, Albania, Serbia, Lebanon and Taiwan — to their tourist travel list, which is based on epidemiological data and is reviewed every two weeks. The representatives also decided to remove a reciprocity clause for the special administrative regions of China, Macau and Hong Kong. The EU recommendations are expected to be formalised on 18 June. The European Parliament has also given final approval to the Covid-19 digital certificate — a smart phone app that EU citizens can use to travel freely among European countries without having to quarantine or undergo extra tests. US Travel Association president and CEO Roger Dow, meanwhile, has welcomed the announcement that president Biden and UK prime minister Boris Johnson had agreed to reopen travel between their two countries as soon as possible: “Opening a US-UK travel corridor is a smart, science-based step to take for both countries’ economic recoveries, and now is the critical time to take it. “The US and the UK both have among the world’s leading records on vaccinations and declining infections, the UK is our top overseas travel market, and the two governments enjoy a close relationship. With abundant evidence that travel is safe with layered health measures in place—and a clear economic need to reopen international travel—moving to reduce travel restrictions between the two countries is the perfect place to start. “The travel industry enthusiastically applauds the Biden administration and UK government for being responsive to the calls to advance a bilateral travel corridor, and hopes to see it implemented by early July. The unemployment rate in the US travel industry is currently more than double the national average, and seizing opportunities to safely reopen all segments of travel will potentially restore millions of jobs and hundreds of billions in economic activity.”