Greece is opening 41 gateways to foreign travelers on Wednesday, July 1, 2020, and these include regional airports, ports and border crossings. However, 9 countries will most likely be on travel ban list on July 1 due to epidemiological data and spike of coronavirus cases, state broadcaster ERT and other media report on Friday.
According to the media information, these countries are:
- United States, united Kingdom, North Macedonia, Sweden, Russia, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
This information remains still to be official confirmed, notes ERT.
It should be recalled, however, that UK is preparing bilateral agreements with several countries, including Greece and Spain. These agreements called “air bridges” will allow the mutual travel of citizens to these countries without mandatory 14-day quarantine upon arrival.
In an interview with BBC on Thursday, Greek Tourism Minister, Haris Theoharis, said that talks with UK on the issue were going well. British PM Boris Johnson is supposed to announce the “air bridges” countries on June 29 and the agreements will go into effect as of July 4.
The travel ban for UK based on the Greek Civil Aviation Authority decision has been extended to June 30.
It should be noted that permanent representatives of European Union member states are meeting in Brussels today to agree on countries for which the travel ban will be extended, when the EU’s external borders open beginning of next month, July 1.
The USA is reportedly top on the list of the countries for which the travel ban will be extended, others are – according to officially unconfirmed information – Russia, Brazil and Qatar.
The increasing number of coronavirus infections in several third countries makes it difficult to negotiate, notes ERT.
Some EU members reportedly suggest to open the bloc’s external borders on July 15.
Washington is trying to reach an agreement in principle with Brussels to avoid being on the list of “not coronavirus-safe” countries.
EU member states may not follow EU decisions, but many do follow the travel bans due to the pandemic.
