Europe’s reopening: Visitors are back, but so are many restrictions

When Europe reopened its borders to Americans in mid-June, it seemed to promise a summer of relative normality, with US tourists boarding trans-Atlantic flights and once again freely strolling the plazas of the continent’s cities. The American visitors are back, but, driven by the highly contagious delta variant, so are the restrictions.

In Greece and Spain, some regions have brought back night time curfews and rules on socialising to contain a sharp rise in coronavirus infections among young people. France, battling a fourth wave of the virus, is requiring people to show proof of vaccination or a negative coronavirus test to access restaurants, bars, shopping malls and public transport.

Italy will introduce a similar mandate this month, requiring at least one dose of the vaccine or a negative test result for social activities. “This is not your usual Europe summer trip where you can just hop between countries carefree without preparation and planning,” said Adrian Kelsey, a market research analyst from New York, who went to Greece last month with a group of friends to celebrate his 40th birthday.

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“Chances are things are going to change or something is going to go wrong, and you need to be okay with that reality before you decide to travel internationally.”

For Kelsey, the issues began before he boarded his flight from New York to Athens. He had been so focused on finalising details of his itinerary in the Greek islands that he forgot to fill out a passenger locator form that must be submitted before midnight a day before a passenger’s scheduled arrival in Greece.

“They wouldn’t let me on the plane,” he said with an embarrassed laugh. “All my buddies got through and I was left behind and had to pay 600 bucks to change my flight to the next day. It was like a bad joke,” he recalled. As Kelsey found, documenting your vaccination or negative test results has become a key part of the experience.

Increasingly, countries across Europe, including France and Italy, are extending the use of their digital health passes to allow entry into restaurants, bars and cultural sites. Getting into the Louvre, for instance, requires not only a reservation, but also proof that you’ve been vaccinated or that you’ve tested negative for the virus within the last 48 hours or that you’ve recovered from the coronavirus. Europeans can show their digital health passes, while Americans must bring their vaccination cards or test results.

Making things even more complex is the fact that the rules frequently change. In Spain, nighttime curfews banning people from being outside between 1am and 6am were reintroduced in some spots last week. Visiting Britain can also be challenging, because it uses a complex “traffic light” system that determines restrictions based on which country you are travelling from. The list also changes every three weeks, or earlier, depending on the status of the coronavirus in each destination.