Tourism destinations should leave the health status of travellers to the origin country to avoid the need for quarantine, according to Portugal’s secretary of state for tourism Rita Marques.
Portugal is due to reopen its beaches on Saturday (June 6) and the country welcomed its first post-lockdown charter flight, from Luxembourg, last week.
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The country is expected to be among the first to welcome UK holidaymakers when the British government relaxes quarantine restriction due to come into force on June 8.
Marques said: “We don’t have quarantine. We intend to adopt the rule that the origin country should control the health status of travellers. If we all adopt this rule we would not need quarantine.”
Speaking in a Euronews debate, Marques said: “We have specific countries that are very dear to us like the UK and not all the conditions are in place to travel right now.
She added: “If airports have body temperature controls in place we don’t need to go to quarantine.”
Speaking in the same debate, EC deputy director-general for mobility and transport Matthew Baldwin declined to comment on the UK’s quarantine restrictions, saying: “The UK is no longer a member of the EU.
But he said: “The vital thing is that any restrictions are based on public health considerations and not on nationality.”
There is hope bilateral agreements on ‘travel corridors’ will allow travel to resume from the UK as early as July, with the UK reportedly in talks with countries including Portugal, Spain, Greece and Turkey.
However, Eduardo Santander, executive director of the European Travel Commission, warned: “Bilateral agreements create a lot of fragmentation.”
He said: “The biggest concern is how we are going to attract people to travel as they used to.
“Unless we have this under control, nobody is going to feel absolutely safe if we have to wear a mask going to a hotel pool, we can’t use a hotel breakfast room or have to separate on a beach.”
Baldwin insisted: “We are all feeling our way. It is not risk free to go to the supermarket at the moment. We want to get flying and the sense of flying to the same level of risk as going to the supermarket.”
He reported: “Flight plans registered for July [with European air navigation body] Eurocontrol show flights are 60% of normal.
“Airlines are reinstating destinations and building up the frequencies when they see how much demand is there, and that is going to depend on how much consumer confidence there is.
“The key is sharing information and data on health protocols and on borders. We are trying to reduce this to the same risk as going to the supermarket.
“We hope to bring online soon a travel app and every citizen will be able to see very quickly what is open in every [EU] country, what transport is open, what is the situation with wearing masks.
“It’s about building confidence. The summer season is now and we want the sector to be able to do as well as it can.”
Marques said: “We have to open gradually with care and attention to details, with all the sanitation rules, but we have to open up.
“In Portugal, everybody knows the rules. Businesses are adapting well to prevent infection among workers and among travellers.”
Santander argued: “What sort of tourism can we expect this summer? It is going to be a lot of self-catering, a lot of car holidays, a lot of nature and open spaces.”
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