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The European Union has reopened to visitors from the United States, but the traffic has not been two-way. There are few clues as to when that will change.
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In June, the European Union officially recommended its member countries reopen their borders to American tourists after more than a year of tight restrictions. The United Kingdom also placed the United States on an “amber” list, and on July 28, said fully vaccinated travelers from the U.S. would be allowed entry to England and Scotland without quarantining upon arrival starting Aug. 2.
But residents of Europe’s Schengen area — spanning 29 countries, city-states and micro-states — as well as those in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland are still barred from traveling to the United States, unless they are a U.S. citizen or they spend 14 days before arrival in a country that is not on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s prohibited list. Certain family members are also exempt.
The restrictions were first put in place in March 2020. Although President Donald J. Trump briefly ordered an end to the ban on European travelers during his last week in office, President Biden quickly rescinded the move.
Discussions about when to resume inbound travel have been opaque. In late June, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said it was too soon to say when the United States would lift travel curbs for European Union citizens.
“We are anxious to be able to restore travel as fully and as quickly as possible. We’re very much guided by the science, by our medical experts. That has to be the foundational principle on which we’re looking at this,” Mr. Blinken said at a news conference in Paris, adding that he “can’t put a date on it.”
Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said on July 26 that the United States was not yet ready to lift restrictions on international travel, citing concerns over the highly contagious Delta variant, which is now the dominant variant in the U.S.
“The more transmissible Delta variant is spreading both here and around the world,” she said in a White House press briefing, adding that the increase in case numbers appears “likely to continue in the weeks ahead.”
Here’s what we know about the United States’ border closures with European countries.
In June, the White House announced the creation of “working groups” with the European Union, the U.K., Canada and Mexico to reopen borders.
“While these groups have met a number of times, there are further discussions to be had before we can announce any next steps on travel reopening with any country,” Kevin Munoz, a White House spokesman, said in a statement. “We have made tremendous progress domestically in our vaccination efforts, as have many of these other countries, but we want to ensure that we move deliberately and are in a position to sustainably reopen international travel when it is safe to do so.”
During the first meeting of the E.U.-U.S. working group, which took place on June 18, officials said they would continue discussions about how to safely reopen travel between the two regions.
“Reciprocity is an important part of our approach to lifting restrictions on non-E.U. countries,” Adalbert Jahnz, a spokesman for the European Commission, said in a statement. He added that the E.U. has “received reassurances that this is a high priority issue for the U.S. administration.”
The Biden administration has repeatedly said that it would rely on the science to guide its decision to relax border restrictions. It has not announced specific benchmarks for reopening.
Even though reported coronavirus cases in the United States have dropped from record-high peaks in the winter, case numbers in July have been on the rise, with public health experts raising concerns about the spread of the Delta variant. The country is reporting an average of about 56,635 new cases a day, according to a New York Times database.
After a slow start, vaccination campaigns have started to pick up. The European Union, initially beset with disruptions in supplies of the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccines, pivoted in April to rely heavily on the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Reported coronavirus cases also remain at low levels in many parts of Europe as more people get vaccinated, but the spread of variants has fueled some outbreaks.
The United Kingdom has seen a sharp rise in reported cases since dealing with an outbreak of the Delta variant, but most remaining restrictions, including those relating to social distancing and mask wearing, were lifted on July 19.
Travel lobbying groups and airlines have urged the United States to reopen travel with Europe to bolster the economy. On July 7, a coalition of 24 trade organizations released a blueprint for reopening borders safely, calling for the United States to allow in fully vaccinated travelers from regions that have high vaccination rates and low levels of variants of concern.
“We know international travel can be restarted and particularly with countries that have similar vaccination rates to the U.S.,” Roger Dow, the chief executive of the U.S. Travel Association, said at a webinar on July 7. He specifically called for the United States to immediately reopen travel with the U.K., pointing out that the country has fully vaccinated about 51 percent of its population.
Some public health experts have also called for the reopening of international travel for vaccinated people.
Barry Bloom, a research professor and former dean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said that United States officials may be wary of the spread of more contagious variants, but that the presence of the Delta variant was already evident in the country.
“Keeping the Brits out is not going to change that fact,” Dr. Bloom said.
The C.D.C.’s list of countries from which travel is prohibited also includes China, Iran, Brazil, South Africa and India.
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