BRUSSELS -- American tourists who have been fully vaccinated against covid-19 will be able to visit the European Union over the summer, the head of the bloc's executive body said Sunday, more than a year after shutting down nonessential travel from most countries to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
The fast pace of vaccination in the United States and advanced talks between U.S. authorities and the European Union over how to make vaccine certificates acceptable as proof of immunity for visitors will enable the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, to recommend a switch in policy that could see trans-Atlantic leisure travel restored.
"The Americans, as far as I can see, use European Medicines Agency-approved vaccines," Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said Sunday. "This will enable free movement and the travel to the European Union.
The agency, the bloc's drugs regulator, has approved all three vaccines being used in the United States, namely the Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson shots.
Von der Leyen did not offer a timeline on when tourist travel might open up or details on how it would occur. But her comments are a top-level statement that the current travel restrictions are set to change.
She added that resumption of travel would depend "on the epidemiological situation."
Technical discussions have been going on for several weeks between European Union and U.S. officials on how to practically and technologically make vaccine certificates from each place broadly readable so that citizens can use them to travel without restrictions.
These discussions are continuing, officials in Brussels said, and it is possible that a low-tech solution would be used in the near future to enable people to travel freely on the basis of vaccination. For example, a traveler to Europe could get an EU vaccine-certificate equivalent on arrival after showing a bona fide certificate issued by his or her own government.
The hope, officials said, is that this step would soon be unnecessary as government-issued vaccine certificates issued by foreign governments would be acceptable and readable in the European Union, and vice versa.
The European Union itself has begun the process of furnishing its own citizens with "digital green certificates," which will state whether the traveler has been vaccinated against covid-19, has recovered from the disease in recent months or has tested negative for the virus in the past few days. Europeans will be able to use those to travel without added restrictions, at least in principle, within the bloc of 27 nations.
Based on von der Leyen's comments, the European Commission will recommend the change in travel policy, though individual member states may reserve the right to keep stricter limits.
Until now, nonessential travel to the European Union has been officially banned with the exception of visitors from a shortlist of countries with very low caseloads of the virus.
Some EU countries have made small exceptions to permit visitors from outside the bloc. Greece, for example, said last week that it would open its borders to travelers from the United States starting today, provided they show proof of vaccination or a negative coronavirus test.