Western Europe has created an accidental travel bubble
Take a look at the map of countries that Britons can visit without isolating either on arrival or return (below), and you will see a wash of restrictions in the east of the Continent and a tide of green in the west.
Quietly, and without fanfare, the UK has established a de facto travel bubble with Western Europe, while an Iron Curtain of restrictions has remained in the east of the Continent, and indeed around much of the world.
As of Friday, the Government lifted quarantine restrictions on 75 countries when arriving in England, although only 23 countries are on the FCO green list, exempt from UK quarantine and are welcoming British holidaymakers without restrictions.
Of those 23, the bulk are Western European – the UK, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, for example.
If we are to take the liberty of using the more traditional definition of ‘Western Europe’ as those countries with a dominant Protestant or Catholic background and which use the Latin alphabet (so including Poland, for example), 21 of the 23 are in Western Europe. The other countries on that list of green countries are Turkey and Trinidad and Tobago.
A handful of Western European countries – Portugal, Austria, Ireland, Slovenia, Ireland – still have some kind of travel restriction in place, either on arrival or return. As do Hungary and Slovakia, along with the rest of Eastern Europe including countries like Belarus, Romania and Ukraine.
It seems that those countries that managed to largely repel Covid-19 in the early days of the pandemic, and which maintain a low number of cases per capita – Greece, for example – are now the ones that have to respond to relatively small, imported spikes of Covid-19, keep their air and land borders on red alert for new cases, or shut them entirely. Last week it emerged that Greece was considering re-establishing travel restrictions after a spate of imported cases, while many relatively Covid-free countries (like New Zealand and Australia) have kept their borders firmly closed.
On the flipside, those that have had the highest case numbers, such as the United Kingdom, France and Spain, are not having to respond to small spikes in the same way. We have stumbled into a collective Western European bubble with those countries that are epidemiologically similar to ourselves, and are able to travel freely between one another.
The numbers show this. Among the countries on the FCO green list, the average number of cases per million residents is 5,024. Exclude the tiny states of San Marino (20,599), Andorra (11,065), and the Vatican City (14,981), which have particular high rates, and it falls to 3,362.
For those countries on the orange or yellow lists, the average is 1,646.
Let’s take a case study. In Greece, there are now more active infections than at any other point during the pandemic – 2,236 people in Greece are known to have the virus right now, and more than 100 cases in the last fortnight have been among incoming tourists. This brings the number to 365 cases of Covid-19 per million population.
Because of its strong handling of Covid-19 to date, Greece is more tentative about welcoming tourists from countries with higher infection rates and is testing certain arrivals, and then putting them into quarantine if positive. In the case of the UK, Greece delayed welcoming back direct flights until July 15 – a month after welcoming the return of tourism to other countries. As of July 14, Bulgarians crossing the border into Greece must provide proof that they have tested negative in the past 72 hours, due to a rise of cases in Bulgaria.
In France, by comparison, there are 62,360 active cases with a recorded 2,616 cases per million people. There are no tests for UK holidaymakers on arrival and there has been no talk of France tightening public restrictions or sharpening up its border checks, as there has been in Greece.
In response to the spike, Greek government spokesperson Stelios Petsas told local media: "We knew from the beginning that when we gradually opened the country’s gates to the world, we would have imported incidents."
He added that he is "determined to protect the majority from the frivolous few." What this could mean is stricter checks to ensure restaurants and bars are observing social distancing, tighter testing on arrivals, and the potential for closing down travel corridors that have recently opened up. Blocking direct flight routes could be one way of achieving this.
Nowhere else in the world have we seen a travel bubble as clearly defined as the one that has emerged in Western Europe. The long-discussed ‘Tasman Bubble’ between New Zealand and Australia has been put on hold, borders across much of South America remain closed or arrivals must undergo tests. Most countries in Africa have closed borders, as is the case across much of south-east Asia. India’s borders are closed. The US remains closed to travellers from the UK and Europe.
Just as we lie on the brink of leaving the EU, we have found ourselves forming an uncodified short-term pact with the very bloc we are set to leave. Although rather than the mutual pursuit of peace in Europe, the founding principle of this one is a mutual high infection rate of Covid-19.
