In a new position paper, travel and tourism associations are calling for the elimination of the colour-coded travel system and the discontinuation of travel restrictions for all Digital Covid Certificate (DCC) holders, irrespective of their country/area of origin.

 

The group of 12 associations, comprising ACI, A4E, CLIA, ECIAA, ETOA, ETC, EU Travel Tech, ETRC, ERA, Hotrec, NECSTour and the WTTC believes that EU countries should move towards a traveller risk-based approach, rather than the country-to-country approach that is currently used.

 

It also believes that EU Member States should abandon the use of the EU White List.

 

“With the summer now behind us, Europe is entering a different stage in its fight against the Covid-19 pandemic,” said the paper, stipulating that 74% of EU adults are now fully vaccinated and vaccination efforts are ongoing throughout Europe.

 

VIRUS ‘UNDER CONTROL WITHIN THE EU’

“Despite the continued spread of the virus at community level, the impact of the pandemic on public health has been brought under control within the EU.

 

“In this context, travel and tourism associations welcome the discussions which are currently taking place between Member States about the revision of Council Recommendations on travel restrictions.

“Amongst others, the Council is considering updating the criteria behind the colour-coded EU travel restrictions map, to include vaccination and hospitalisation rates and not only the incidence rate.”

 

Considering that the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) is now acknowledging that EU travel restrictions have not had a significant impact on reducing virus transmission, hospitalisations, or deaths the group is calling for the elimination of the colour-coded system altogether.

 

CALL TO ABANDON WHITE LIST

The move appears to be in line with the ECDC, which is also proposing to discontinue the use of the combined indicators and the colour-coded system ‘due to limited public health value’, to focus on promoting vaccination amongst travellers.

 

“With a focus on the individual traveller, there is no justification to treat international travel any differently than intra-EU travel,” added the group of travel and tourism organisations.

 

“While several Member States have already opened non-EU travel outside of the EU under similar conditions as intra-EU, some continue to discourage non-essential travel to any country that is not on the very limited list of safe countries.

 

“International travel should be made possible with the same conditions as for intra-EU travel: based on vaccination, recovery or a negative COVID-19 test; with quarantine requirements and recommendations against non-essential travel strictly limited to very high incidence or variant areas of concern. On this basis, we also call on Member States to abandon the use of the EU White List.”