Further harmonising tourism restrictions in Europe key to restart travel to international markets

Given the current improvement of the epidemiological situation concerning COVID-19, HOTREC, together with other tourism and travel stakeholders, hopes that the continuous harmonisation of the travel restrictions will lead to the re-opening of travel to all international markets shortly.

In this sense, we welcome the Council Recommendations for travel within the EU and for third-country nationals to enter the EU. We also support the proposal of the Commission to revise the EU Covid-Certificate (EU DCC) Regulation. 

We encourage Member States to accept all vaccines recognised by WHO and follow the validity of the EU COVID certificate for any internal rules. This attitude will avoid situations where, for instance, tourists can enter a country but not hospitality venues within that country. 

The EU DCC is only to be used when and if the Member States want to impose travel restrictions, but not as an excuse for adopting the temporary reintroduction of controls at internal borders.

In our view, this will help keep Europe as the world’s number one tourist destination.