New EC proposals on intra-EU and international travel

30 November 2021: 70 travel and tourism organisations, including ERA, have expressed their support to any effort – based on scientific evidence – to keep protecting and ensuring the freedom of movement and avoid a patchwork of diverging national measures within the EU/EEA as well as internationally. 

In light of the evolving epidemiological situation and the continued emergence of new COVID-19 variants (e.g. Omicron), the European Tourism Manifesto alliance, a group of 70 public and private travel and tourism organisations and the voice of the sector in Europe, welcomes the European Commission’s continued efforts to ensure a co-ordinated approach to travel measures and support the proposed shift to an individual traveller-based approach, in which a valid EU Digital COVID Certificate (DCC) is sufficient to travel without additional requirements (no further testing or quarantine). This is in line with the most recent European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) authoritative and science-based analysis, which confirms that travel restrictions generally have no effective impact on the spread of the virus in Europe.

The implementation of the EU DCC has been a huge success and it is becoming an international standard. In this context, the alliance welcomes the European Commission’s proposal to shift to an individual traveller-based approach (in which a valid Digital COVID Certificate is sufficient to travel without additional requirements) and calls on Member States to:

• Agree on a standard validity of the vaccination certificate.
• Adopt the updated Council Recommendations as soon as possible to ensure the implementation of the new rules before the festive period. The 10 January 2022 as implementation date represents an issue (damaging forward booking among others).
• Swiftly adopt the EU digital Passenger Locator Form.
• Recognise the whole list of WHO vaccines without additional requirements for travellers coming to the EU.
• Focus on the individual traveller-based approach and discontinue the use of ECDC map as a source of information to base travel restrictions.

The European Tourism Manifesto alliance gathers 70 European public and private organisations, covering the whole tourism value chain and beyond. The alliance calls on the European Union for action on key policy priorities for the tourism sector. For more information, please visit tourismmanifesto.eu