EU member states agreed on Wednesday to reopen the bloc's borders to travellers who have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, European sources said, according to AFP . Meeting in Brussels, the diplomats also agreed to increase the level of new cases a country can hit before being declared unsafe, a measure that would open up travel into the EU from more places. The recommendations will be adopted by EU ministers on Friday. An EU Commission spokesman confirmed that the envoys had endorsed the update to travel rules. Since March 2020, non-essential travel into the 27-member European Union has been banned, apart from a small number of countries deemed safe because of their low COVID-19 case rate. Under the new rules, according to AFP , travellers who could demonstrate that they had received the required number of doses of an EU-approved vaccine could enter the bloc. In addition, the number of cases per 100,000 people that a country could register over two weeks and still be considered for the green list will rise from 25 to 75. This would still exclude non-vaccinated travellers from much of the world, but could allow travel from, for example, Britain, which is well-advanced in its vaccination campaign. The current green list only has seven countries, including Israel. Other countries on the list are Australia, Israel, New Zealand, Rwanda, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, plus China if Beijing agrees to reciprocate. The British government recently announced a list of countries to which citizens will be able to travel to without having to quarantine on their return, including Israel, Portugal and Iceland. Italy has also expressed a desire to drop the quarantine requirement for visitors from the rest of the European Union, Britain and Israel.
