The rules for European travel are so complex that we’ve become a nation of timid stay-at-homes

Name? Passport? Batch number? Just when travellers felt that crossing frontiers couldn’t become any more complex, along comes a freshly terrifying headline: “European holidays could be off limits to 5 million Britons given Indian-made AstraZeneca jab”.

The front-page story in The Telegraph marked the end of an exhausting week for those of us who try to keep tabs on the tangle of travel restrictions that are spreading across Europe, at the same time as coronavirus infections rocket in the UK.

A long-standing anti-EU trope maintains that what Angela says goes, and some of the coverage created the impression that Chancellor Merkel had imposed mandatory quarantine against British travellers.

The reality, of course, is that every EU country is sovereign – and accordingly they seem to be determined to come up with 27 varieties of admissions policy for British visitors. Last Saturday Malta, the latest “green list” addition, revealed it would allow in only vaccinated adults.

By midnight on Sunday, Portugal had come up with a vaccine-or-self-isolation policy. Monday brought warnings from Spain of impending testing rules, the detail of which is still being argued over as I write on Friday evening.

What have we become? A nation of timid stay-at-homes, mainly, because the rules are so complex that going abroad is mainly for the bold and the desperate.

That suits the government just fine: ministers want to keep the lid on international travel. How different things looked a year ago today, when the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, announced the end to the blanket quarantine scheme that had put a stop to almost all international travel. By the end of the week I was in France, rapidly followed by Italy and Greece.

This summer, even with a vaccine, all these options are off the table for anyone unable or unwilling to quarantine.

Yet for tens of millions of holidaymakers across Europe, the summer is here – and quite soon, I predict, the nation will wake up. Which is perhaps why Boris Johnson now appears to want to take the credit for opening up international travel. The prime minister raised the subject with the German leader at Chequers, and Ms Merkel declared: “In the foreseeable future those with double jabs will be able to travel to Germany without quarantine.”

Perhaps this could be the summer when Britons finally learn to appreciate the wonders at the heart of Europe.

Yours,

Simon Calder

Travel correspondent