Astypalea, Greece
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LONDON – Looking for a holiday in Greece or Spain? You may be waiting for some time.
European leaders are expected to say on Thursday that all non-essential travel needs to 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 virtually on Thursday afternoon to discuss the current state of the pandemic in the region. The EU is still one of the parts of the world hardest hit by the coronavirus, with several nations still trapped or with strict social restrictions in place. At the same time, vaccination efforts have started off roughly and some question whether the EU will reach its goal of vaccinating 70% of its adult population by summer.
“The epidemiological situation remains serious and the new variants pose additional challenges. We must therefore maintain strict restrictions while intensifying efforts to accelerate the supply of vaccines,” European leaders are expected to say, according to the preliminary document.
There have been more than 21 million cases and more than 515,000 deaths from Covid-19 in Europe so far, 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, which are considered to be more transmissible and infectious.
The new variants have become the dominant strains in many member states.
Charles Michel
President of the European Council
The current health emergency is particularly acute in the Czech Republic and parts of Latvia, Sweden, Spain and Portugal.
Speaking before 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 implies increasing our sequencing capacity and preparing the basis for vaccine updates. . “
Given the health crisis, European leaders are not yet ready to ease travel restrictions.
“For now, non-essential travel needs to be restricted,” they must say, according to the document.
This will be bad news for countries heavily dependent on tourism. Greece, for example, has pressured the EU to agree to some kind of vaccine passport, so that it can more easily reopen its tourism industry in time for the summer.
However, leaders seem far from agreeing with this idea for now. Some heads of state believe it is too early to consider a vaccination passport, as vaccine distribution is still at an early stage.
Rickard Gustafson, CEO of Scandinavian Airlines, told CNBC’s Squawk Box Europe on Thursday that vaccine passports or similar IDs “could help reopen the world, however … I’m concerned that this may not be a national standard, it needs be an international standard. “
Furthermore, for this idea to work, Gustafson said that it needs to be applied to “all other modes of transport”.
“This is not just an aviation issue. It needs to be implemented to the same extent for all other modes of transport because if you cross a border, it really doesn’t matter whether you cross over by plane, by train, by car, by bus,” he said.
Implementing something like vaccine passports in Europe would be particularly challenging, given its free movement policy.
European citizens often use trains, buses and other means of transport to travel between EU countries and, during these trips, their passports are not checked. As such, having to check vaccination certificates at the border would cause significant logistical problems and could deter some potential tourists from traveling abroad.