Tourist in a mask taking a selfiePhoto: TheVisualsYouNeed (Shutterstock)

Right now, only seven European countries (Croatia, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece, Iceland, Montenegro, and Serbia) allow Americans to visit as tourists. But the President of the European Commission did announced a plan This would allow fully vaccinated people from the US to visit for non-essential reasons – provided the EU can reach an agreement with the US government.

The plan will be based on finding a way to document evidence of vaccination. While the talk of “vaccination passports” was controversial in the US, travelers often had to prove their vaccination status in order to travel to certain countries.

The EU has proposed a “digital green certificate” that can document whether you have received a COVID-19 vaccine, whether you have recently recovered from COVID-19 and can be considered immune, and whether you have recently had COVID – have carried out a negative test. 19. You hope that the US government can issue its own similar certificate – and that you can travel to and within the EU by either showing your US certificate or using your US certificate to obtain an EU certificate to obtain.

Currently, EU restrictions on travelers are based in part on the frequency of COVID cases in the country they are traveling from. But if you are vaccinated it may not matter how much COVID is in your home country.

When the plan goes into effect, the EU will recognize people as vaccinated if they have received a vaccine approved by the European Medicines Agency, Europe’s equivalent to the FDA, and all three vaccines used in the US (Pfizer, Moderna , and Johnson & Johnson) are authorized by the EMA.

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