Spain has made it clear that it is officially removing travel restrictions on UK travellers from Monday.
The Spanish government said the residents of the UK and Japan will be able to avoid restrictions on non-essential travel to the EU. That is, for them taking the PCR test is not necessary.
Although the UK tourists will still have to stay in quarantine when they return.
While Germany announced that all the UK tourists would have to quarantine for about two weeks.
According to the German public health institute, this decision was made considering the widespread of the Indian Covid-19 variant. This variant is responsible for the majority of new cases in parts of England.
But the UK government strongly opposes non-essential travel to most other EU countries. This includes Germany and Spain.
The UK Prime Minister Boris Johansson said: “We’ve been clear people shouldn’t be travelling to amber list [nations] for the purpose of holidays. Our advice hasn’t changed. We will keep the green list under review… and will add countries where possible.”
Portugal is a part of the UK’s “green” list of countries that are free of the quarantine requirement. UK follows the traffic light system so, people are advised to avoid amber and red countries, where the Covid risk is greater.
Currently, the EU is deciding to expand its “white list” of countries that allow citizens to enter EU freely.
Tourism in Portugal and Spain depends heavily on British visitors in the summer, and travellers from England, Scotland and Wales began flying to Portugal last Monday.
Spain will allow vaccinated people from other non-EU countries to enter the country from 7 June, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said. This includes US citizens also.
He thinks that lifting these curbs would allow Spain’s summer tourism to reach 30-40% of 2019 levels.
The country has decided to welcome people from countries with an occurrence rate of below 75 cases per 100,000 people.
Therefore, UK travellers would be eligible but there are enduring concerns about the Indian Covid-19 variant.
But some EU countries wish to wait and see how the surge of British cases related to the Indian variant plays out.
