European Nations Still Not Buying Into a Coordinated Approach on Travel Rules
Photo Credit: Denmark is one of only five EU countries to ease entry per the European Council's recommendation. Flickr Commons / Dennis Sylvester Hurd
Skift Take
Two years in, the pandemic continues to show just how split most European Union member governments are on pandemic leadership. Destinations that persist with multiple entry rules will continue to negatively impact their tourism economies.
Perhaps no other region has demonstrated the chaos and resulting negative impact on the travel industry as a result of a non-uniform approach to entry rules than the European Union. But there was hope for the end of the fragmented EU approach by early 2022.
The European Council adopted a recommendation, effective February 1, that members should lift all entry restrictions for intra-EU movement, and base the rules on an individual’s health status — vaccinated, recovered, or neither — rather than the traveler’s country of origin.
This would mean members agreed in principle to take a more coordinated approach to travel within the EU for starters as of Tuesday, and that governments would lean towards using the EU Digital Covid Certificate as sufficient for entry, with a validity period of nine months starting on February 1.
But a close examination of the "Re-Open EU" platform on Tues
