Date Published: 03/02/2021
ARCHIVED - EU permits member states to restrict even essential travel from Covid high-risk areas
ARCHIVED ARTICLE
Unrestricted travel is currently advised to and from only 7 countries in the world
The 27 member states of the EU reached an agreement on Tuesday by which even “essential” travel can be restricted in the case of new and worrying variants of Covid-19 emerging in other countries, although at the same time the agreement reiterates the need to continue permitting journeys which can be considered absolutely necessary and unavoidable.
The aim of this agreement is to make it possible for each individual state to introduce bans on all but utterly essential travel from other countries, preventing tourism and business trips originating from countries considered to be of special risk. Similarly, EU states are allowed to place limits even on the categories of traveller considered essential, although it is not specified which of these groups of travellers would be affected first.
At present the EU recommends that unrestricted travel should be permitted to and from only seven destinations, namely Australia, New Zealand, Rwanda, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand and, if reciprocity is guaranteed, China. The list is reviewed every two weeks with an assessment of the epidemiological situation in each country.
At the same time, the criteria applied on deciding the level of restrictions on travel have also been modified, and it is now specified that for restrictions to be relaxed the country of origin for arrivals must have recorded fewer than 25 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in the last 14 days, must be able to demonstrate a downward or flat curve in the rate of infection and must have carried out at least 300 coronavirus tests per 100,000 inhabitants in the last week.
In addition, a positivity rate of 4 per cent or lower is required in the testing and the Covid variants detected in the country concerned will be taken into account, along with aspects such as the way in which the pandemic is being monitored and the track and trace systems in place.
These recommendations come on top of the addition of a new “dark red” colour to the traffic light categories of red, amber and green which are used to illustrate the degree of risk currently associated with different areas of the EU. The dark red areas are those with 14-day incidence rates of over 500 cases per 100,000 inhabitants (including practically all of Spain at present) and travel to and from these areas is strongly discouraged.
The EU has stopped short of isolating dark red areas, but member states will demand a negative PCR test before travel for those leaving the risk zones and quarantine on arrival.