I believe Germany has closed the borders again for traffic from the UK with France to follow later today given the Indian variant. 2 weeks quarantine will be demanded.
Europe has agreed a European recognised certification now that will allow travel freely again as of end of June within the Schengen region initially then within the entire EU later on in July.
EU lawmakers and nations agreed on that, but the European Parliament insisted that COVID-19 certificates should be enough to allow EU citizens to move about freely in all member countries, and that governments shouldn’t be allowed to impose extra restrictions on certificate-holders, such as quarantines and more tests.
Since border controls are a national responsibility, EU member nations were not ready to relinquish their prerogatives. Another roadblock was the price of tests, as lawmakers insisted the tests should be free of charge,
Under the compromise sealed Thursday, the European Commission said it would allocate 100 million euros in EU funds ($122 million) for the purchase of virus tests compatible with the certificates.
“This should particularly benefit persons who cross borders daily or frequently to go to work or school, visit close relatives, seek medical care, or to take care of loved ones,” the parliament said.
Peter wrote:
Sadly that is spot on, especially the 2 x vacc part.
I didn’t view it as a cause for sadness. My take on it is that I’m glad I live in a country where it’s culturally unacceptable for restaurants, bars and other venues to demand health-related paperwork before admitting you, whether on their own initiative or by government mandate. The UK is culturally different to the rest of Europe on this, and in fact ID cards have been tried in the UK a few times – but other than during the two world wars have always been sufficiently unpopular that politicians have had to abandon the idea.
My concern is the regulatory ratchet and the risk that this stuff will not be rolled back once the ‘extraordinary circumstances’ pass.
I don’t use the NHS tracing app because frankly I find the idea of registering a visit to my local pub on a government database rather chilling, and I do not wish to normalise it. If the establishment presses the matter (most do not) then I take the details-on-paper option, safe in the knowledge that the staff/proprietor are going through the motions and the chances of that scrap of paper going anywhere other than the bin are close to zero.
On the topic of travelling to the UK, does anyone have any idea if travelling to the UK for the annual on the Comanche in July should be possible? Not sure what quarantine rules are. Aircrew seem except from it if in country for less than 2 days, that being said not sure if that applies to GA without a CPL as well?
LFHNflightstudent wrote:
On the topic of travelling to the UK, does anyone have any idea if travelling to the UK for the annual on the Comanche in July should be possible? Not sure what quarantine rules are. Aircrew seem except from it if in country for less than 2 days, that being said not sure if that applies to GA without a CPL as well?
The UK puts countries on one of three lists:
Green: only testing is required.
Amber: testing and self-imposed 10-day quarantine (which they say will be checked, i.e. you will be visited at the stated address).
Red: testing and quarantine in government-designated hotel at a cost of ~£1,500.
France is presently on the Amber list. Whether you could get the aircrew exemption would depend on the interpretation/mood of the person processing your arrival, but would 2 days be enough for an annual?
Graham wrote:
Whether you could get the aircrew exemption would depend on the interpretation/mood of the person processing your arrival
Which, reading this, might not be such a good idea.
172driver wrote:
Which, reading this, might not be such a good idea.
I don’t think any person competent in managing their own affairs needs to worry about that.
The Guardian have been running that story (with varying examples) for a few days now. It aligns with the Guardian narrative that all borders (and especially the UK’s Border Force) are an inherently unacceptable thing and that the UK’s borders should be open to all.
When you actually read the articles you find their examples are either (a) people who turned up at the border with a paperwork situation that any half-intelligent person should have known was a recipe for trouble, or (b) people who are pretending Brexit didn’t happen and are just raging that they don’t have the freedom to enter that they did last year.
I looked over the total cumulative death rates worldwide on the Worldometer site. IIRC the US considered as a whole was once 11th worst on the list and is now 18th worst, as other countries see a continuing higher rate of fatalities and rise on the list. As others have already said, the vaccine campaign in the US and e.g. UK is basically stopping CV19 in its tracks and allowing resumption of normal life. When almost anybody who wants to be vaccinated can be, there is no need for unworkable and uncivil ideas like vaccine passports to enter businesses – you just make your own choice, protect yourself if desired, and get on with your life.
In relation to the perceived trade off between death rate and removal of personal rights, I continue to think its an example of naive wishful thinking and/or opportunistic power grabs, not a beneficial reality. For example some countries ‘higher’ (worse) on the list than the US, a group including UK, Italy, Belgium, Slovenia and so on have tried all kinds of lockdowns and other repressive stuff and it apparently didn’t work, and the same lack of correlation exists when comparing US states. I don’t think anybody has any idea of what really drove or drives real world infection rates up and then down again…. except for the vaccines that were the high payoff, higher risk strategy that in the end actually works.
I didn’t view it as a cause for sadness. My take on it is that I’m glad I live in a country where it’s culturally unacceptable for restaurants, bars and other venues to demand health-related paperwork before admitting you, whether on their own initiative or by government mandate. The UK is culturally different to the rest of Europe on this, and in fact ID cards have been tried in the UK a few times – but other than during the two world wars have always been sufficiently unpopular that politicians have had to abandon the idea.
To clarify, I would not want to see a vacc cert used for entry to pubs. Too controversial…
But it should have been implemented for travel.
OTOH it wouldn’t be of much use, given by far the most virus has lately been arriving from India, which is not going to deliver any meaningful piece of vacc status evidence.
I am off to Croatia tomorrow and I am going just with the original of that little NHS card, plus a printout of my GP record (and I will have a laptop on which I have a login set up into the GP record). I have the NHS app on the phone but that sh1tty useless piece of IT crap has stopped working because the useless fingerprint reader, which never worked, can’t read my finger anymore, so the stupid useless app won’t open 
And the stupid NHS IT dept has made a fingerprint mandatory.
172driver wrote:
In Austria, where I find myself right now, you have to fulfill one of three criteria to enter any restaurant (AFAICT bars are still closed). They call it the 3G approach:
- geimpft (vaccinated; 2nd dose plus 2 weeks or something like that; only EMA-approved vaccines accepted)
- getestet (negative test, various tests accepted with varying validity)
- genesen (recovered from a Covid-19 infection)All of the above get checked at the door and then there is a registration process once inside for contact tracing. The former is enforced, the latter not really. Luckily so far my US vaccination card has been accepted everywhere.
That’s basically identical to how it works in Germany then.
At the end of the day, these policies often reflect national cultures quite well. The fact that such a concept is “unworkable” in the UK, as attested by @Graham and Peter, shows German speaking countries are much more ready to give the state a say in these matters and have it regulate private life than Anglo-Saxon countries.
And, despite several policy errors, our overall Covid-19 strategy has worked better at protecting the population from the pandemic.
MedEwok wrote:
our overall Covid-19 strategy has worked better at protecting the population from the pandemic
Whoa, we are on page 789 of this thread and you open up the can of “we did it better than you”. Wait, I’ll fetch some popcorn 
