Germany is planning a near-total ban on travellers from Britain, Portugal, Brazil and South Africa as European governments increasingly move to bar entry from countries where more contagious Covid-19 variants are rampant.
Berlin’s initiative came as EU interior ministers met to discuss a more coordinated approach to international travel restrictions.
Last week Belgium barred all non-essential travel by land, sea and air into and out of the country, and the Netherlands announced a ban on incoming flights from the UK, South Africa and South America. Portugal, which has the world’s highest per capita seven-day averages of both new cases and deaths, said it would close its border with Spain for two weeks from Friday.
“To protect our population, there should be no entry from regions where these variants of the virus are rampant,” the German interior minister, Horst Seehofer, said on Thursday, adding the measures were “under discussion” in Berlin.
Seehofer said Germany aimed to push forward with its plans even if the EU27 did not agree similar measures across the bloc. “We cannot expect a European solution that meets our expectations any time soon, so are preparing national measures,” he said.
The EU already maintains a list of countries – currently including Australia, China, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand – from which travellers may enter the bloc without a negative Covid test and the requirement to quarantine.
Japan was removed from the list on Thursday, while the UK was not added to it after the Brexit transition period ended on 31 December, meaning almost all travellers from Britain must have a valid reason for their journey and present a negative test.
Individual member states are, however, allowed to set their own rules on borders, and EU interior ministers met on Thursday to discuss making the rules on restricting international travel into the bloc less disparate.
The EU is particularly eager also to avoid individual capitals deciding to shut internal borders, as happened briefly last spring when many member states closed off national borders unilaterally, triggering travel and economic chaos.
EU governments are “totally convinced” the bloc’s internal borders must remain open, but equally believe it must be possible to limit non-essential travel when necessary, the European council president, Charles Michel, said last week.
The European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, agreed, saying non-essential cross-border travel, except for essential workers and truck drivers, should be “strongly discouraged”. Blanket border closures were not as effective as targeted measures and did great economic harm, she said.
“There is currently a very high number of new infections across many member states, so there is an urgent need to reduce the risk of travel-related infections,” the justice commissioner, Didier Reynders, said. “Border closures will not help, common measures will.”
Some member states, however, have already closed internal borders. On top of Portugal’s border closure, Finland this week banned all but essential travel from Sweden, saying its “epidemiological situation differs considerably from that in other Schengen countries”, while Sweden extended a ban on travel from Denmark.
Sandra Ciesek, a professor of virology at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, said a Europe-wide protocol was essential. “We must try to delay the spread of the variants in Germany,” she said. “That can only function if it’s Europe-wide, because we are not living isolated on an island.”
The bloc is working on adding a new dark red category to the colour-coded map it introduced last year, which classifies countries as green for low risk, orange for medium risk and red for high risk. Travellers from dark red areas would need either a pre-departure test or to agree to self-isolate on arrival.
Several EU countries have already introduced such restrictions. France, Italy, Greece and the Netherlands, for example, now require all intra-EU and Schengen travellers, with some exemptions, to present a negative PCR test.
The Netherlands has gone further, demanding since last week that ferry or plane travellers from high-risk areas must also take a rapid-flow test four hours before they leave as part of a strategy to “raise as many barriers as possible” to the new variants entering the country. Germany has introduced a similar requirement.
Belgium’s ban is “really not about building a wall around Belgium”, the prime minister, Alexander De Croo, said last week. “We can still go to other countries – but only for essential reasons.”
For the next four and a half weeks, all tourism and travel for leisure and pleasure is banned. Business trips are permitted and truck drivers can continue to cross borders, as will people who need to travel to funerals or for other significant family reasons. While there is no outright ban on travellers returning from the UK, Brazil and South Africa, they do have to take a test on the first and seventh day of their return to Belgium, and observe a 10-day quarantine.