Astypalea, Greece
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LONDON – Fancy a vacation in Greece or Spain? You could wait a while.
European leaders are expected to say Thursday that all non-essential travel must be restricted as the health situation in Covid remains “serious” across the continent, according to a document released by CNBC.
The 27 heads of state of the European Union will meet virtually on Thursday afternoon to discuss the current state of the pandemic in the region. The EU remains one of the hardest-hit parts of the world by the coronavirus as a number of nations are still in lockdowns or strict social restrictions. At the same time, the vaccination effort got off to a bumpy start and some questions were about whether the EU will achieve its target of vaccinating 70% of its adult population by the summer.
“The epidemiological situation is still grave and the new variants pose additional challenges. We must therefore comply with strict restrictions while stepping up efforts to accelerate the delivery of vaccines,” says the draft document.
There have been more than 21 million cases and over 515,000 deaths from Covid-19 in Europe to date, according to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control. Since late 2020, health officials have identified a number of new variants of the virus that are considered more common and contagious.
The new variants have become the dominant tribes in many Member States.
Charles Michel
President of the European Council
The ongoing health emergency is particularly acute in the Czech Republic and parts of Latvia, Sweden, Spain and Portugal.
Speaking ahead of the meeting, the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, Chair of the Summits, said: “The new variants have become the dominant strains in many Member States. This implies improving our sequencing capacity and preparing the groundwork for vaccine updates.”
In light of the health crisis, European leaders are not yet ready to relax travel restrictions.
“For now there is no need to restrict essential travel,” the document says.
This will be bad news for countries that are heavily dependent on tourism. Greece, for example, has urged the EU to agree on some kind of vaccination certificate so that it can more easily reopen its tourism industry in time for the summer season.
The heads of state and government do not seem to agree with this idea for the time being. Some heads of state believe that it is too early to consider a vaccination certificate because vaccine use is still in such an early stage.
Rickard Gustafson, CEO of Scandinavian Airlines, told CNBC’s Squawk Box Europe on Thursday that vaccination records or similar identifications “could help reopen the world, but … I fear this may not be a national standard, but an international standard got to.”
According to Gustafson, for this idea to work it must be applied to “all other modes of transport”.
“This is not just an aviation problem. It must be used equally for all other modes of transport, because when you cross a border it doesn’t matter whether you get there by air, by train, by car or by car cross.” Bus, “he said.
The introduction of vaccination passports in Europe would be particularly difficult in view of the free movement policy.
European citizens often use trains, buses and other means of transport to travel between EU countries and their passports are not checked during these trips. Checking vaccination certificates at the border would therefore create significant logistical problems and discourage some potential tourists from traveling abroad.
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