Astypalea, Greece
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LONDON – Want to go on holiday to Greece or Spain? You might be waiting for a while.
European leaders are expected to say on Thursday that all non-essential travel should remain restricted, as Covid’s health situation remains “serious” across the continent, according to a document seen by CNBC.
The 27 heads of state of the European Union will meet practically on Thursday afternoon to discuss the current state of the pandemic in the region. The EU remains one of the most affected parts of the world by coronavirus, with a number of nations still closed or with strict social restrictions. At the same time, vaccination efforts have had a rough start and some are questioning whether the EU will achieve the goal of vaccinating 70% of its adult population in the summer.
“The epidemiological situation remains serious and new variants pose additional challenges. Therefore, we must maintain tight restrictions as we intensify efforts to accelerate the supply of vaccines,” European leaders are expected to say, according to the draft document.
So far there have been more than 21 million cases and more than 515,000 deaths from Covid-19 in Europe, according to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control. Since the end of 2020, health authorities have identified a number of new variants of the virus, considered more spreadable and infectious.
The new variants have become the dominant strains 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 prior to the meeting, European Council President Charles Michel, who chairs the summits, said: “The new variants have become the dominant strains in many Member States. This means improving our sequencing capacity and prepare the ground for vaccine updates “.
Given the health crisis, European leaders are not yet inclined to ease travel restrictions.
“For now, non-essential travel needs to be restricted,” they are expected to say, according to the document.
This will be bad news for countries that depend heavily on tourism. Greece, for example, has pushed the EU to agree on some sort of vaccine passport so it can more easily reopen its tourism industry in time for the summer season.
However, leaders seem to agree with this idea for now. Some heads of state believe it is too early to consider a vaccination passport, as vaccine deployment is still at such an early stage.
Rickard Gustafson, CEO of Scandinavian Airlines, told CNBC’s Squawk Box Europe on Thursday that vaccine passports or similar identifications “could help reopen the world, but … I’m concerned that this may not be a national standard, ha of being an international standard “.
Also, for this idea to work, Gustafson said it needs to be applied to “all other means of transportation.”
“This is not just an aviation problem. It needs to be deployed to the same extent as on all other means of transport, because if you cross a border, it doesn’t matter if you cross it by plane, by train, by car, by bus. “, he said.
Implementing something like vaccine passports in Europe would be particularly difficult, given its policy of free movement.
European citizens often use trains, buses and other methods of transport to travel between EU countries and passports are not checked during these trips. As such, having to verify vaccination certificates at the border would cause major logistical problems and could deter some potential tourists from traveling abroad.