Skift Take

How is that a surprise? Seems common sense is being made official in EU.

European Union is looking to make official its already widely-known unofficial stance: that it is only opening to itself and rest of Europe for this summer and potentially all of the rest of this year, and other countries that have done a bad job with pandemic response will likely not be allowed in as international travelers anytime soon.

The New York Times reports that EU is preparing a “draft lists of acceptable travelers” and Americans aren’t on it, though that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone following any news on how U.S. pandemic response is going, and what EU has been planning all along as it reopens summer travel across the continent.

“European nations are currently haggling over two potential lists of acceptable visitors based on how countries are faring with the coronavirus pandemic. Both include China, as well as developing nations like Uganda, Cuba and Vietnam,” the story says.

The NYT story says one list contains 47 countries with an infection rate lower than the E.U. average; the other longer list has 54 countries and also includes those nations with slightly worse case rates than the E.U. average, going up to 20 new cases per 100,000 people. Neither of these lists include U.S., lumping it. with Brazil and Russia.

The list apparently will become official by July 1 and will be reviewed and revised every two weeks depending on infection levels in these high-risk countries.

We have been tracking travel’s reopening on our timeline on Reopening.travel for the last month or so, and the emergent trend is that Europe is only going to open to itself this summer and maybe rest of the year. Australia has already said it likely won’t be open for international travelers rest of the year.

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