When Can You Travel to Europe After Vaccination?
Currently, only seven European countries (Croatia, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece, Iceland, Montenegro, and Serbia) allow Americans to visit them as tourists. But the president of the European Commission announced a plan that would allow fully vaccinated people from the US to visit the country for nonessential reasons – provided the EU can reach an agreement with the US government.
The plan will rely on finding a way to document vaccinations. Although talk of “vaccine passports” has been controversial in the US, travelers often had to show proof of their vaccination status in order to travel to certain countries.
The EU has offered a digital green certificate that can document whether you received the COVID-19 vaccine, whether you have recently recovered from COVID-19 and whether you can be considered immune or have recently tested negative for COVID-19. They hope that the US government can issue its own similar certificate – and that you can travel to and from the EU either by presenting your US certificate or using your US certificate to obtain an EU certificate.
Currently, EU travel restrictions depend in part on how common COVID cases are in the country they are traveling from. But if you are vaccinated, they think it doesn’t matter how much COVID is in your country.
If the plan is implemented, the EU will recognize people as vaccinated if they had a European Medicines Agency-approved vaccine, the European FDA equivalent, and all three vaccines used in the US (Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson) are EMA-authorized.