...And French retaliate by isolating us

BRITISH citizens travelling to France will have to enter quarantine for two weeks, the Paris government has announced.

The restrictions will come into force on June 8 and are a retaliatory move after Home Secretary Priti Patel revealed on Friday that anyone entering the UK will have to self-isolate for 14 days or face a £1,000 fine.

Lorry drivers, seasonal farm workers and medical staff will be exempt from the measure that Ms Patel said was designed to ‘reduce the risk of cases crossing our border’.

French ministers said they ‘regretted’ the UK’s decision and announced they would impose reciprocal measures for any European country enforcing a quarantine.

Ms Patel said that so-called ‘air bridges’ could be agreed with certain countries that had similar levels of Covid-19 infection and neither nation would need to impose quarantine. Despite earlier reports that such an agreement could be reached with France, no such measures were announced on Friday.

The new UK rules will be reassessed every three weeks.

Meanwhile, Italy, which was once the European epicentre of the pandemic, has announced that it will lift its quarantine measures on June 3.

Raffaele Trombetta, the Italian ambassador to the UK, told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme: ‘We believe that this pandemic is a global problem so the best thing to do is to tackle it with a coordinated approach. We have made it clear what we are going to do and it’s important for British people to know that they can come to Italy.

‘We understand that the UK’s new rules will be reassessed after three weeks so hopefully there will be an easing of the measures as we are doing in Italy.’

The UK isn’t the only country to introduce quarantine for international travellers. Fourteen-day quarantine rules apply in destinations including Spain, Canada, the United Arab Emirates, Australia and New Zealand. Greece, which has not been hit as hard by the pandemic as other European countries, instructs arrivals to quarantine if they test positive for Covid-19.

Spain has banned most foreign visitors and the only British citizens allowed to enter are those with permanent residency status.

But Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said yesterday he hoped ‘the entry of foreign tourists will restart in July in a safe manner’.