EU to back reopening of borders to British tourists, says Lisbon - Financial Times

Portugal expects the EU to follow its example this week by recommending that the other 26 member states reopen their borders to British tourists.

Rita Marques, Portugal’s secretary of state for tourism, said Lisbon was confident the EU would change its current advice that EU countries allow only essential travel from the UK, giving Europe the green light to welcome back British holidaymakers.

According to Marques, the Council of EU member states is expected to add the UK to the list of third countries approved for non-essential travel to the EU later this week.

“We know that the commission is going to reassess the concrete situation of the UK and, in principle, according to the information we have, this revision [of the EU’s travel recommendations] will be favourable to the UK,” Marques told the Financial Times.

The European Commission proposed on May 3 that member states ease the restrictions on non-essential travel from third countries to take into account the progress of vaccination campaigns and other epidemiological developments worldwide.

Portugal will welcome tourists from the UK and some EU countries from midnight on Sunday, provided Covid-19 infection rates in their countries are lower than 500 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. Passengers will also have to show a negative PCR test made within 72 hours before departure

Marques said the anticipated addition of the UK to the list of third countries greenlighted for non-essential travel to the EU, meant Portugal was only slightly ahead of the rest of the bloc in opening up to British visitors.

Portugal has used its rotating presidency of the EU Council, which ends next month, to push for the creation of a “green digital certificate”. This would enable people who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 or otherwise immune to travel freely within the bloc.

Marques is confident the certificate will be ready by June. “Our aim is to abandon country-to-country travel regulations and move to a system where the rules are based on the epidemiological situation of the individual person,” she said.

Lisbon’s announcement on UK visitors on Friday ended uncertainty for airlines and travel companies over whether Portugal would open its borders in time for British holidaymakers to take advantage of decisions by the governments in England, Wales and Scotland to allow international travel to resume from Monday.

Marques, however, said the uncertainty had resulted from a misconception. Portugal reviews its Covid-19 travel regulations every 15 days and was only scheduled to announce its decision on Sunday. “We decided to bring the announcement forward to avoid any misunderstanding, but there was never any uncertainty in Portugal,” she said.

Portugal is a popular destination for UK holidaymakers and the only EU country on England’s “green list” of 12 destinations for which a 10-day quarantine rule for returning visitors has been lifted.

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This has led to a surge in demand. Jet2, the online travel agency and airline, said bookings to Faro, the airport for Portugal’s southern Algarve coast, and Madeira increased 600 per cent in the 24 hours after the green list announcement.

Marques said 30 flights from the UK were scheduled to land in Portugal on Monday alone, most of them in Faro. Allowing in holidaymakers from the UK, Portugal’s biggest tourism market, she said, would help the sector recover from last year’s collapse, when the number of overnight tourist stays fell back to the level of 1994.

Portugal is among the EU economies most dependent on tourism, which accounts for about 17 per cent national output and 19 per cent of jobs. “We don’t expect to return to the tourism numbers of 2019, which was a record year, before 2023,” Marques said. “But we hope to do better this year than in 2020.”

Commission recommendations on Covid-19 travel regulations are largely followed by member states, but are not legally binding. Germany on Friday designated the UK a risk area for coronavirus, citing the emergence of the B.1.617 variant of the virus first detected in India. Anyone entering Germany from such areas must show a negative test result or go into quarantine.

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2021-05-16 18:18:45Z
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