Major blow to airlines, British tourists fume and term it as unfair
Britain removed Portugal from its quarantine-free travel list on Thursday, essentially shutting down the UK’s international leisure market just weeks after it reopened and sparking outrage from embattled airlines.
The industry questioned why British people could not travel when the country had some of the highest vaccine rates in the world. Portugal said the decision lacked logic. Airports demanded a cash lifeline.
Tired of mixed messages, British sunseekers in Portugal also reacted with fury and disbelief to their government’s decision to reimpose a quarantine regime for travellers coming from the popular southern European destination.
Transport minister Grant Shapps said however that coronavirus variants had been detected in Portugal, forcing the UK to shut off the one big European holiday destination it had sanctioned and prioritise its national reopening instead.
Britain also failed to add any more countries to its so-called green-list for travel, angering easyJet, British Airways and London’s Heathrow Airport which accused the government of trying to seal the country off from the rest of the world.
“It’s a safety-first measure,” Shapps said, adding that it was designed to prevent any further coronavirus variants from arriving and threatening the planned final stage of England’s reopening on June 21.
Britain tentatively relaunched travel on May 17 following more than four months of lockdown, using a traffic-light system where arrivals from green-listed countries do not have to quarantine. Arrivals from amber countries must quarantine at home, while red countries require expensive hotel quarantine.
Portugal was the only big beach destination placed on the green list, which allowed Britons to travel there without needing to quarantine when returning home.
But on Thursday Britain shifted Portugal to its amber list due to rising COVID-19 case numbers and the risk of a mutation of the virus variant first discovered in India.
Britain also added seven more countries to its red list. Countries added to the “red list” are- Afghanistan, Bahrain, Costa Rica, Egypt, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and Trinidad & Tobago. No new countries were added to the quarantine-free green list.
Over the last three weeks, Portugal proved a lifeline for the industry which had expected a wider reopening to follow. It now faces weeks of cancellations and uncertainty.
“This decision essentially cuts the UK off from the rest of the world,” easyJet said.
The Airport Operators Association said the government must provide a financial bailout to save jobs if it blocks another holiday season. “Summer 2021 is shaping up to be worse than last summer, which was the worst in aviation history,” it said.
The industry added that the UK would be left behind as governments across Europe start to open up travel.
“In the week that the Prime Minister hosts G7 leaders to launch his government’s vision of Global Britain, he’s sending a message that the UK will remain isolated from the rest of the world and closed to most of its G7 partners,” Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye said.
The industry is already weakened by 15 months of lockdowns, forcing it to cut tens of thousands of jobs and take on debt, and it will be severely challenged if there is no reopening this summer.
The news is also likely to sound the alarm in France, Spain, Greece and Italy where thousands of jobs rely on the arrival of high-spending British tourists each summer.
Portugal’s foreign ministry said it did not understand the “logic” behind the decision. “We took note of Britain’s decision to remove Portugal from the green list,” the ministry said on Twitter, adding that it would continue to ease its lockdown rules “gradually”.
Portugal has lifted most of its lockdown restrictions. The government has been heavily criticised for allowing thousands of mainly maskless English football to party in Porto during the Champions League final last weekend.
The British government’s decision is a huge blow for Portugal’s tourism sector, which represents a significant chunk of GDP and has Britain as one of its biggest foreign markets. (Reuters)