Entering the Port of Dover in the UK on 21st December 2020 – what have we learned after 2 years of… [+] travel restrictions?
It’s been an incredibly eventful two years in the world of travel (sometimes just in terms of how uneventful it has been) since Europe first introduced Covid-19 related travel restrictions.
But with France lifting all travel restrictions and testing requirements as of August 1, there are only a handful of travel restrictions left for entry into some European countries.
What have we learned as travelers? And will any of these restrictions and guidelines remain in place?
Passports lost (a little bit of) their superpowers.
Governments responded differently to the pandemic, which was changing the shape of lockdowns and longer-term outcomes around the world. In some cases, this has meant the value of owning certain passports has plummeted — for example, according to the Henley Passport Index, the power of the US passport has fallen to 7th place during the pandemic.
Mounting bureaucracy is one of the best ways to ensure people stay put.
It was incredibly complicated to work out each government’s restrictions. To see also : CDC adds 5 locations to ‘high’ risk category for travel. In some cases, whenever a restriction was introduced or a rule changed, governments simply announced that the previous measure had been lifted.
When governments brought back old changes, they wrote that the new measure repealing the old measure had been revoked, and so on. With the Fifteenth Amendment, who knew what the rules were? But maybe that’s the point — the more confusing the rules, the more people stayed away and stopped traveling.
Governments can form effective, unified border controls, but they take time.
It takes a long time to create uniform and unified measures at neighboring borders, for example across the EU, but they work and are effective. On the same subject : How To Know If The Perfect Trip Is Right For You.
Launched in all European countries on July 1, 2022, the EU Digital Covid Certificate (EUDCC) contributes to freer movement of EU citizens within their borders during a pandemic.
Travel restrictions can come back in as quickly as they went out.
Most EU countries have left contingency measures in place to quickly ‘put the brakes on’ if necessary and without having to ratify the measures in Parliament – France is the latest country to leave these powers unchanged in its state of emergency. To see also : How the Millennial remote worker finds work, offers a digital nomad lifestyle.
The pandemic has been a dry run for how governments can curb travel in the future.
Governments might try to restrict our movements to reduce cheap travel and reduce climate emissions. And travel restrictions may need to be reinstated to deal with climate change or (related) extreme weather conditions.
Whether travelers are for or against such an idea, it’s clear governments now have a template to take action.
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