Talks begin over travel corridors to Med hotspots

BRITAIN has opened talks to establish “travel corridors” with popular holiday destinations including Portugal, Greece and France as the European nations announced plans to open borders and lift quarantine restrictions.

Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, said the Foreign Office was leading the bilateral talks with European countries to discuss the possibility of “air bridges” or “corridors” that would allow tourists to sidestep the 14-day UK quarantine, but refused to set a date for them.

Boris Johnson confirmed negotiations were under way but said international travel corridors would only be allowed “when the evidence shows that it is safe to do so”. He would not be drawn on whether people would be able to go abroad on holiday this year.

The Government is under pressure from the travel industry, MPS and some of the European nations to have the “travel corridors” in place by the end of this month to enable holidaymakers to get a foreign summer holiday by July, although it has yet to agree the criteria on which they will be determined.

Factors are expected to include the economic importance of a country to the UK, the amount of trade, passenger numbers, airport health screening and the Covid-19 “risk picture”.

Augusto Santos Silva, Portugal’s foreign minister, confirmed yesterday that his country was in discussions with the UK, saying quarantine was “an enemy of tourism”.

Portugal, which attracts 2.1 million British tourists a year, hopes to have an agreement in place for the end of this month, when the British Government has said it will review quarantine rules.

“During these weeks our diplomats will work together in order to guarantee that British tourists coming to Portugal would not be subjected on their return to England to any kind of quarantine,” he said.

Italy opened its borders yesterday and wants to see the UK’S quarantine scrapped when it first comes up for review on the week beginning June 28 . It expects to be at the front of the queue for any travel corridors or air bridges.

“We hope that at the end of June quarantine will be abolished,” said a government source. “Should the UK before that date make agreements with countries to exempt their citizens from quarantine, of course we would hope to see Italy included in that list.”

Greece confirmed it will open to tourists from low-risk regions from June 15 and is in talks with Britain for a “reciprocal” arrangement whereby passengers would avoid quarantine in either country.

Haris Theocharis, Greece’s tourism minister, said the epidemic was moving “in the right direction” in the UK and restrictions could be dropped for Britons from June 15. Although some parts of Britain would satisfy the Greek criteria, others do not yet do so.

Spain is also looking to negotiate travel corridors although it has excluded Britain from a trial opening up the Balearic islands of Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza, and Formentera by the middle of June because of the UK’S comparatively high infection rate.

Maria Reyes Maroto, the Spanish tourist minister, said: “The health situation still has to improve.”

France, which is expecting to lift travel restrictions from EU countries on June 15, confirmed it was in talks with the UK for a “reciprocal” deal under which neither would impose quarantine on the other.

In the Commons, Ms Patel came under pressure from senior Tory backbenchers to accelerate negotiations so that prospective travel corridors could be announced in tandem with quarantine taking effect next week.

Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the powerful 1922 back-bench committee, said: “We need immediate clarity about the criteria for safe countries and the names of those countries that will have air bridges put in place rapidly.”