The United Kingdom is in talks with governments of several EU countries over creating a ‘travel bubble’, ‘travel corridor’ or ‘air bridge’ as different countries have termed it.
European countries are opening their borders collectively on 15 June, allowing for international travel.
Portugal, Greece and France are some of the countries that could be entering such an agreement with Britain, and these visitors to the UK will be exempted from the 14-day quarantine applicable to all other visitors entering the country, according to The Telegraph.
Speaking to BBC Radio, Portuguese foreign minister, Augusto Santos Silva, said that ‘quarantine is an enemy of tourism’ and anyone wanting a holiday in Portugal this summer would be ‘most welcome’, reports The Guardian.
The London Chamber of Commerce encouraged the implementation of travel corridors, saying that a blanket quarantine for all international arrivals ‘sent out a message that the UK is closed for business.’
Its chief executive, Paul Scully, proposed country-by-country assessments and added that the government’s steps to restarting the economy should ‘recognise that arrivals from some countries with much lower transmission levels than the UK and low incidence of the disease would not increase our risk, provided they adopted our social distancing protocols on arrival’, according to The Guardian.
Residents of the UK expressed mixed reactions on Twitter:
For 3 million Europeans in the Uk, travel corridors are about seeing parents too.
— Isabelle Roughol #SaveIndependentNews (@iroughol) June 4, 2020
I’m sure all those countries can’t wait to have travel corridors with the UK https://t.co/2ClVv1t8Fp pic.twitter.com/ir0ovFqjMy
— ‘Client Journalism’ Expert (@PopulismExpert) June 4, 2020
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PM Boris Johnson:
‘The idea of safe corridors, safe travel between the UK and other countries with low levels of infectivity, we’ll certainly be developing that as we go forward.’
— Paul B Toovey (paul2v) (@paul2v) June 4, 2020
How can the PM can be talking about “travel corridors” with other countries while the UK remains the highest risk in the region. #dreamonBoJo
— Caner Anac (@cnranac) June 3, 2020
The new UK policy on quarantine is positively weird. Background: there is a lot of talk in the EU about and push back against the idea of ‘safe corridors’. You can bet that they will come up with a set of common criteria to define areas to/from were it is safe to travel 1/2
— Paolo Radaelli (@RadaelliPaolo) May 22, 2020
Also read: Only certain passport holders can visit Portugal
Image credit: Instagram/atlondonbridge
