European Union nations agreed on Friday to an easing of travel restrictions over summer that can allow fully vaccinated tourists to avoid tests or quarantines and broaden the list of EU regions from which it’s safe to travel.
Ambassadors from the 27 EU member states approved a modified European Commission proposal that individuals who have been fully vaccinated for 14 days should be able to travel freely from one EU nation to another, current EU president Portugal stated.
Restrictions for other travelers should be based on the degree to which the nation they are coming from has COVID-19 infections under control.
Just over 1 / 4 of EU adults are now fully vaccinated.
The revised tips come as the EU introduces COVID-19 certificates that can indicate whether an individual is vaccinated, has immunity because they were previously infected, or has had a recent negative test. The system is set to be ready by July 1, although some nations will launch certificates earlier.
As the pace of vaccinations accelerates, the bloc will loosen the visitor’s light color-coding to represent the relative safety of various EU regions.
“Green” regions must now have fewer than 25 cases per 100,000 individuals in 14 days, with below 4% of positive tests. That will rise to 50, or 75 if the positivity rate is less than 1%.
The limits for the next, “orange” level will also rise.
For travel from a green zone, there should be no restrictions, from orange – potential for a test; for red – a possible quarantine; and non-essential travel discouraged for “dark red”.
Children aged 12 or more could be examined, but would only quarantine if an adult accompanying also had to.
EU member states will also be able to hit an “emergency brake” to bar all travelers from an area showing a spike in more infectious variants of the disease.
The system is designed also to apply to non-EU members of the open-border Schengen zone – Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland, but not to former EU member Britain.
A similar traffic mild system operates for other nations, with eight on a green record, but not Britain, which is being stored off for now due to the widespread incidence thereof the Delta variant of the coronavirus.
Visitors from other nations could also come as long as they can prove they are vaccinated.
Border policy as a whole, though, is a matter for individual EU nations, so they can still set their own rules.
