ONCE again, Spain holds more blue flags for its beaches and marinas than any other country in the world – a record it has held without interruption for 30 years.
Europe's plans for restarting cross-border tourism and travel explained
17/05/2020
TRAVELLING and tourism within the European Union may start to reopen soon – or, at least, the European Commission is in favour of beginning to relax international movement within the bloc, and has issued a series of recommendations to member States.
The Commission says that, in general terms, it would like to start replacing the total travel ban in force at the moment with 'more focused measures', such as identifying which parts of Europe are 'starting to become safe', using a three-stage recovery system – much like that in use in Spain at present – and by reducing density in transport, such as requiring fewer passengers on airlines.
“At the moment, the epidemiological situation means it would be ill-advised to lift travel restrictions altogether, but this should be done in 'phases' like those put into operation in various countries,” the Commission says.
It proposes a bloc-wide 'scaling down' of the lockdown in three stages – 'Phases' 0, 1 and 2.
Spain's own 'unlocking' is in four phases – 0, 1, 2 and 3 – with, from Monday, all the country except the Greater Madrid region, the Barcelona metropolitan area and around half the health departments in Castilla y León on 'Phase 1', the former zones on 'Phase 0' and the islands of Formentera (Balearics) and El Hierro, La Gomera and La Graciosa (Canaries) on 'Phase 2'.
Europe in 'Phases'
The European Commission considers the bloc to be in 'Phase 0' right now – with borders between member States still shut, but the countries in question starting to apply mechanisms to gradually open up restrictions on movement.
'Phase 1' in Europe will see a 'partial' lifting of border controls and restrictions, and if this cannot be across the board and immediate, an easing off could start between 'regions, areas or member States' whose 'situation and evolution' in terms of virus control are similar.
An example could be travel permitted between northern Spain and southern France, but not between southern Spain and France, nor between southern and northern France – or perhaps between Spain and the Scandinavian countries but not between Spain and Italy; or maybe anywhere within eastern Europe but not western Europe.
As yet, the respective situations in each member State, or parts thereof, are not clear enough to be able to work out a possible strategy, but it is expected this will be on the cards soon.
Where travel between two areas or countries whose contagion situation is different – one being farther ahead and nearer recovery than another – 'extra steps' will be taken when crossing borders, including 'additional vigilance and control'.
“We need to take into account the domestic situation – that is, whether restriction on movement is now being relaxed within a country a person is travelling from or to – as our starting point,” the Commission explains.
Authorisation by the different member nations to travel to given areas must be in an 'informed and coordinated manner', based on 'three criteria' and cannot be 'discriminatory', the Commission warns – meaning permission to travel must be for all territories which comply with the criteria and for all citizens, with no 'cherry-picking' between them.
As an example, if Spain, Portugal and France were all in similar situations concerning the Covid-19 pandemic, Spain could not allow its residents to travel to Portugal but not France, and could not permit travel to 'Spanish nationals only'.
Also, says the Commission, no country will be permitted to open borders with neighbouring countries but not with anywhere else in the EU – the criteria to follow will be based upon the 'epidemiological situation' in given member States, not the distance between them. So, for example, if Portugal, France and Germany were in a similar position to Spain, then Spain would not be allowed to permit travel to Portugal and France but not Germany.
'Phase 1' for Europe would also relax restrictions on travel for people with family members in another member State, and also for work reasons – as an example, in some central and eastern countries such as Austria, Hungary, Czechia, south-eastern Germany and Slovakia, many workers commute 'abroad' for their jobs; residents in relatively small, land-locked nations surrounded by other countries say they have very little European immigration, because their 'foreign' workforce simply drives across the border twice a day.
At present, most of these people will have been prevented from going to work for some weeks, purely because doing so meant leaving the country every morning.
'Phase 1' in Europe would mean 'prioritising' cross-border movements in 'key areas of the economy', says the Commission – which may well include international tourism, in the case of Spain and other Mediterranean nations where the holiday industry forms a major chunk of their income.
The Commission says it is 'very concerned' that the pandemic may affect the common market, 'just as it's recovering now from the financial crisis of 2008', and for this reason wants any restrictions on international travel within the bloc to be 'proportionate, effective, and not to go beyond what is necessary to contain the pandemic and protect public health'.
Countries whose Covid-19 situation is 'improving' will be among the first to open up to each other, but they will also be required to have 'mechanisms in place' for containing the pandemic, both at the border and beyond, including restrictions in areas where social distancing is not possible.
One of these mechanisms, the Commission says, could be that a tourist automatically receives an SMS on their mobile phone when crossing a border giving them information about national and regional restrictions, and who to contact if they experience Covid-19 symptoms.
'Phase 2' in Europe, which will be the equivalent of Spain's 'Phase 3', will come with a general internal border opening and will happen once the 'epidemiological situation' in all EU member States is 'sufficiently positive and comparable', but precautions will still apply, including hand-sanitiser dispensers, information campaigns, social distancing and, in countries where it is compulsory, masks being worn.
Air travel
Also applying to road and sea travel, Brussels recommends all member States 'limit contact' between passengers and between employees in the transport industry, largely by 'reducing numbers' on board and making mask use compulsory.
The Commission recommends tickets be available online at all times and this method encouraged where possible, so as to avoid touching more than necessary and limiting person-to-person contact.
Additionally, physical distancing should be maintained at security, baggage reclaim and check-in.
“Fewer passengers should be allowed on board,” the Commission says, “to enable physical distancing, particularly between passengers who are not part of the same household.
“Passengers not living together should be seated apart from each other, and if distancing cannot be guaranteed, masks should be compulsory.”
All airline, bus, train and ship workers must have proper protection, such as barriers between them and the passengers, and requiring the latter to enter by the back door on coaches and planes.
Doors should be automatic, so passengers do not have to press a button or pull a lever when they reach their stop, and all stops used whether or not a passenger rings the bell.
All transport facilities should be thoroughly disinfected between passengers, and food and drink should no longer be served or sold on board for a while.
“Ventilation needs to be reinforced; for example, with appropriate filters and natural ventilation where possible, and travel operators should develop strategies for use in the event of a passenger becoming ill or displaying Covid-19 symptoms during the journey,” recommends the Commission.
Hotels, apartments and other accommodation
Parts of Spain whose tourism is largely based upon holiday homes, either owner-occupied or rented, are expecting to be able to open to visitors much sooner than those which rely mostly on hotels – holiday homes, even when used by multiple sets of guests over the course of a summer, have fewer, or no, communal areas, and self-catering trips reduce the necessity for people having to eat in restaurants.
Of course, most do, and more often than they would at home, preferring to avoid cooking, enjoy a change of scenery and savour the local cuisine, but this is not as essential as, for example a guest on a bed-and-breakfast régime in a hotel, who needs to eat out at least once a day.
The European Commission wants all accommodation to have 'health and hygiene procedures' in place, and tourism will only be opened up in places where hotels, holiday parks, resorts and other types of living quarters are near to a health service which has 'sufficient capacity' to treat not only locals, but also tourists on top of locals.
In some coastal areas in Spain, the population doubles or even quadruples in summer, and health service reinforcements for the season must be able to cope with this influx more than ever before – in addition to the usual heightened hospital and GP surgery traffic, they need to be able to handle a hypothetical Covid-19 outbreak among tourists and residents alike, and have the resources available for testing and for tracing anyone who may have been in contact with a person diagnosed.
“These regulations are to allow people to stay in hotels, holiday parks, B&Bs and other accommodation, eat and drink in restaurants, bars and cafés, and go to the beach, safely,” the Commission says.
Contact-tracing Apps
These, where available, should be 'transparent, temporary and cyber-safe', says the Commission, as well as 'anonymous' and employ 'Bluetooth technology', but should be 'voluntary' – nobody should be forced by law to download them.
Making them compulsory could cause serious headaches for tourists or residents who do not have mobile phones, whose mobiles are non-Smartphone types, are already too 'full' to download anything else, or which are simply not compatible with the sources used for downloading.
App developers will be given guidelines to enable them to work with national health authorities, and ensure they are as widely-available as possible.
“EU citizens must be able to receive alerts of possible infections in a safe, protected way, wherever they are in the EU, and independently of the type of App they are using,” says the Commission.
Travel vouchers
The Commission recommends those whose holidays, flights, train journeys or other travel have been interrupted by the pandemic be offered vouchers, with terms and conditions 'as attractive as possible', allowing them to make their trips up to 12 months from the date of cancellation.
Then, if the voucher is not used within this period, the traveller can be given a full refund.
The idea of vouchers for future travel is to avoid airlines and tour operators going out of business by having to stump up massive amounts of cash in refunds all at once – with a 12-month travel token in hand, the costs involved to the operators can be spread out.
“According to EU law, travellers have the right to choose between vouchers or a refund for transport tickets or package holidays cancelled,” says the Commission.
“Whilst we reiterate this right, we would also recommend operators make vouchers an attractive enough alternative to reimbursement for customers to want to take these up instead, given that reimbursements all at once could lead to severe financial pressure for businesses involved.”
The Commission will, too, be seeking to make the rules more flexible for travel companies to be able to qualify for State funding, some or all of which may be offset by financial assistance from the EU.
Among the latter, the sum of €8 billion has been set aside from the European Investment Fund to help out small businesses affected by the pandemic.
Europe's keenness to open borders and restart tourism and family visits – as long as safety can be guaranteed – will come as a breath of fresh air for Spain, as the summer season looms large: A time of year when many traders, especially those on the coasts, make most of their annual income.
Related Topics
TRAVELLING and tourism within the European Union may start to reopen soon – or, at least, the European Commission is in favour of beginning to relax international movement within the bloc, and has issued a series of recommendations to member States.
The Commission says that, in general terms, it would like to start replacing the total travel ban in force at the moment with 'more focused measures', such as identifying which parts of Europe are 'starting to become safe', using a three-stage recovery system – much like that in use in Spain at present – and by reducing density in transport, such as requiring fewer passengers on airlines.
“At the moment, the epidemiological situation means it would be ill-advised to lift travel restrictions altogether, but this should be done in 'phases' like those put into operation in various countries,” the Commission says.
It proposes a bloc-wide 'scaling down' of the lockdown in three stages – 'Phases' 0, 1 and 2.
Spain's own 'unlocking' is in four phases – 0, 1, 2 and 3 – with, from Monday, all the country except the Greater Madrid region, the Barcelona metropolitan area and around half the health departments in Castilla y León on 'Phase 1', the former zones on 'Phase 0' and the islands of Formentera (Balearics) and El Hierro, La Gomera and La Graciosa (Canaries) on 'Phase 2'.
Europe in 'Phases'
The European Commission considers the bloc to be in 'Phase 0' right now – with borders between member States still shut, but the countries in question starting to apply mechanisms to gradually open up restrictions on movement.
'Phase 1' in Europe will see a 'partial' lifting of border controls and restrictions, and if this cannot be across the board and immediate, an easing off could start between 'regions, areas or member States' whose 'situation and evolution' in terms of virus control are similar.
An example could be travel permitted between northern Spain and southern France, but not between southern Spain and France, nor between southern and northern France – or perhaps between Spain and the Scandinavian countries but not between Spain and Italy; or maybe anywhere within eastern Europe but not western Europe.
As yet, the respective situations in each member State, or parts thereof, are not clear enough to be able to work out a possible strategy, but it is expected this will be on the cards soon.
Where travel between two areas or countries whose contagion situation is different – one being farther ahead and nearer recovery than another – 'extra steps' will be taken when crossing borders, including 'additional vigilance and control'.
“We need to take into account the domestic situation – that is, whether restriction on movement is now being relaxed within a country a person is travelling from or to – as our starting point,” the Commission explains.
Authorisation by the different member nations to travel to given areas must be in an 'informed and coordinated manner', based on 'three criteria' and cannot be 'discriminatory', the Commission warns – meaning permission to travel must be for all territories which comply with the criteria and for all citizens, with no 'cherry-picking' between them.
As an example, if Spain, Portugal and France were all in similar situations concerning the Covid-19 pandemic, Spain could not allow its residents to travel to Portugal but not France, and could not permit travel to 'Spanish nationals only'.
Also, says the Commission, no country will be permitted to open borders with neighbouring countries but not with anywhere else in the EU – the criteria to follow will be based upon the 'epidemiological situation' in given member States, not the distance between them. So, for example, if Portugal, France and Germany were in a similar position to Spain, then Spain would not be allowed to permit travel to Portugal and France but not Germany.
'Phase 1' for Europe would also relax restrictions on travel for people with family members in another member State, and also for work reasons – as an example, in some central and eastern countries such as Austria, Hungary, Czechia, south-eastern Germany and Slovakia, many workers commute 'abroad' for their jobs; residents in relatively small, land-locked nations surrounded by other countries say they have very little European immigration, because their 'foreign' workforce simply drives across the border twice a day.
At present, most of these people will have been prevented from going to work for some weeks, purely because doing so meant leaving the country every morning.
'Phase 1' in Europe would mean 'prioritising' cross-border movements in 'key areas of the economy', says the Commission – which may well include international tourism, in the case of Spain and other Mediterranean nations where the holiday industry forms a major chunk of their income.
The Commission says it is 'very concerned' that the pandemic may affect the common market, 'just as it's recovering now from the financial crisis of 2008', and for this reason wants any restrictions on international travel within the bloc to be 'proportionate, effective, and not to go beyond what is necessary to contain the pandemic and protect public health'.
Countries whose Covid-19 situation is 'improving' will be among the first to open up to each other, but they will also be required to have 'mechanisms in place' for containing the pandemic, both at the border and beyond, including restrictions in areas where social distancing is not possible.
One of these mechanisms, the Commission says, could be that a tourist automatically receives an SMS on their mobile phone when crossing a border giving them information about national and regional restrictions, and who to contact if they experience Covid-19 symptoms.
'Phase 2' in Europe, which will be the equivalent of Spain's 'Phase 3', will come with a general internal border opening and will happen once the 'epidemiological situation' in all EU member States is 'sufficiently positive and comparable', but precautions will still apply, including hand-sanitiser dispensers, information campaigns, social distancing and, in countries where it is compulsory, masks being worn.
Air travel
Also applying to road and sea travel, Brussels recommends all member States 'limit contact' between passengers and between employees in the transport industry, largely by 'reducing numbers' on board and making mask use compulsory.
The Commission recommends tickets be available online at all times and this method encouraged where possible, so as to avoid touching more than necessary and limiting person-to-person contact.
Additionally, physical distancing should be maintained at security, baggage reclaim and check-in.
“Fewer passengers should be allowed on board,” the Commission says, “to enable physical distancing, particularly between passengers who are not part of the same household.
“Passengers not living together should be seated apart from each other, and if distancing cannot be guaranteed, masks should be compulsory.”
All airline, bus, train and ship workers must have proper protection, such as barriers between them and the passengers, and requiring the latter to enter by the back door on coaches and planes.
Doors should be automatic, so passengers do not have to press a button or pull a lever when they reach their stop, and all stops used whether or not a passenger rings the bell.
All transport facilities should be thoroughly disinfected between passengers, and food and drink should no longer be served or sold on board for a while.
“Ventilation needs to be reinforced; for example, with appropriate filters and natural ventilation where possible, and travel operators should develop strategies for use in the event of a passenger becoming ill or displaying Covid-19 symptoms during the journey,” recommends the Commission.
Hotels, apartments and other accommodation
Parts of Spain whose tourism is largely based upon holiday homes, either owner-occupied or rented, are expecting to be able to open to visitors much sooner than those which rely mostly on hotels – holiday homes, even when used by multiple sets of guests over the course of a summer, have fewer, or no, communal areas, and self-catering trips reduce the necessity for people having to eat in restaurants.
Of course, most do, and more often than they would at home, preferring to avoid cooking, enjoy a change of scenery and savour the local cuisine, but this is not as essential as, for example a guest on a bed-and-breakfast régime in a hotel, who needs to eat out at least once a day.
The European Commission wants all accommodation to have 'health and hygiene procedures' in place, and tourism will only be opened up in places where hotels, holiday parks, resorts and other types of living quarters are near to a health service which has 'sufficient capacity' to treat not only locals, but also tourists on top of locals.
In some coastal areas in Spain, the population doubles or even quadruples in summer, and health service reinforcements for the season must be able to cope with this influx more than ever before – in addition to the usual heightened hospital and GP surgery traffic, they need to be able to handle a hypothetical Covid-19 outbreak among tourists and residents alike, and have the resources available for testing and for tracing anyone who may have been in contact with a person diagnosed.
“These regulations are to allow people to stay in hotels, holiday parks, B&Bs and other accommodation, eat and drink in restaurants, bars and cafés, and go to the beach, safely,” the Commission says.
Contact-tracing Apps
These, where available, should be 'transparent, temporary and cyber-safe', says the Commission, as well as 'anonymous' and employ 'Bluetooth technology', but should be 'voluntary' – nobody should be forced by law to download them.
Making them compulsory could cause serious headaches for tourists or residents who do not have mobile phones, whose mobiles are non-Smartphone types, are already too 'full' to download anything else, or which are simply not compatible with the sources used for downloading.
App developers will be given guidelines to enable them to work with national health authorities, and ensure they are as widely-available as possible.
“EU citizens must be able to receive alerts of possible infections in a safe, protected way, wherever they are in the EU, and independently of the type of App they are using,” says the Commission.
Travel vouchers
The Commission recommends those whose holidays, flights, train journeys or other travel have been interrupted by the pandemic be offered vouchers, with terms and conditions 'as attractive as possible', allowing them to make their trips up to 12 months from the date of cancellation.
Then, if the voucher is not used within this period, the traveller can be given a full refund.
The idea of vouchers for future travel is to avoid airlines and tour operators going out of business by having to stump up massive amounts of cash in refunds all at once – with a 12-month travel token in hand, the costs involved to the operators can be spread out.
“According to EU law, travellers have the right to choose between vouchers or a refund for transport tickets or package holidays cancelled,” says the Commission.
“Whilst we reiterate this right, we would also recommend operators make vouchers an attractive enough alternative to reimbursement for customers to want to take these up instead, given that reimbursements all at once could lead to severe financial pressure for businesses involved.”
The Commission will, too, be seeking to make the rules more flexible for travel companies to be able to qualify for State funding, some or all of which may be offset by financial assistance from the EU.
Among the latter, the sum of €8 billion has been set aside from the European Investment Fund to help out small businesses affected by the pandemic.
Europe's keenness to open borders and restart tourism and family visits – as long as safety can be guaranteed – will come as a breath of fresh air for Spain, as the summer season looms large: A time of year when many traders, especially those on the coasts, make most of their annual income.
Related Topics
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