Vaccinated tourists from the United States will be permitted to visit the European Union this summer, according to a European Commission official.
U.S. tourists who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 will be permitted to visit EU nations after more than a year of restricting nonessential travel due to the pandemic, the head of the bloc’s executive body told the New York Times on Sunday.
“The Americans, as far as I can see, use European Medicines Agency-approved vaccines,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said Sunday in Brussels. “This will enable free movement and the travel to the European Union because one thing is clear: All 27 member states will accept, unconditionally, all those who are vaccinated with vaccines that are approved by EMA.”
Noting that the U.S. is “on track” to attain herd immunity by mid-June, von der Leyen told the outlet that the resumption of travel would depend “on the epidemiological situation, but the situation is improving in the U.S., as it is, hopefully, also improving in the European Union.”
SOUTH DAKOTA BANS VACCINE PASSPORTS
She did not offer details on when tourists would be allowed to reenter the EU, and a representative for the European Commission did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
The new policy marks a reversal from the EU’s previous stance of limiting nonessential travel in an effort to limit transmission of COVID-19. Even as vaccination rates have risen within the U.S., reports of recipients of some vaccines developing rare blood clots slowed vaccine rollouts in some EU states.
Some U.S. states have balked at the notion of requiring proof of vaccination status as a prerequisite for certain activities, with South Dakota, Florida, Texas, and Arizona all banning vaccine passports in recent weeks.
“We’ve resisted government mandates, and SD is stronger for it,” South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem tweeted when announcing her state’s ban on vaccine passports. “I encourage all South Dakotans to get vaccinated against COVID-19, but we are not going to mandate any such activity. And we are not going to restrict freedom with un-American policies like vaccine passports.”
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The three COVID-19 vaccines that have been granted emergency use authorizations by the Food and Drug Administration have been shown to be effective at preventing laboratory-confirmed COVID-19, with the Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines achieving 95%, 94.1%, and 66.3% effectiveness, respectively, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The U.S. has had nearly 32 million diagnosed cases of COVID-19, with more than 229 million vaccines administered, according to the CDC.
