EU member states agreed on Wednesday to reopen the bloc’s borders to travellers who have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, sources said.
Meeting in Brussels, diplomats also agreed to increase the level of new cases a country can hit before being declared unsafe — a measure that would open up travel into the 27-member bloc from more places.
The recommendations will be adopted by EU Ministers on Friday, they said.
Since March 2020, non-essential travel into the EU has been banned, apart from a small number of countries deemed safe because of low COVID-19 cases.
Diplomats said that, under the new rules, travellers who could demonstrate that they had received the required number of doses of an EU-approved vaccine could enter the bloc.
In addition, the number of cases per 1,00,000 people that a country could register over two weeks and still be considered for the green list will rise from 25 to 75. This would still exclude non-vaccinated travellers from much of the world, but could allow travel from, for example, Britain, which is well-advanced in its vaccination campaign.
The current green list has seven countries: Australia, Israel, New Zealand, Rwanda, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, plus China if Beijing agrees to reciprocate.
