American Robert, 36, and French Élodie, 29, last week became the first long-distance couple to reunite in France after eight months of being separated by Covid-19 travel restrictions.

“I'm happy, it's been so long, we needed to be together,” Robert told French media when he arrived at the Charles-de-Gaulle airport north of Paris.

France, along with the rest of the EU, effectively closed its borders in early March to all but essential travel in a bid to stem the spread of Covid-19 in the country.

To this date, even after the EU somewhat slackened travel restrictions for those coming in from its external borders, travellers from a long list of countries – such as the US, India and Brazil – are still barred.

France allowed French residents to return along with travel for “imperative family reasons”, but these did not cover unmarried couples in long-distance relationships who simply wanted to reunite.

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France only recognises couples as such if they live together, are married or PACSed (a civil partnership or pacte civil de solidarité). 

Unmarried couples have long complained that they are treated as second-class couples due to their lack of official documents “proving” their relationship's validity.

The group #LoveIsNotTourism campaigned for months to push France to make good on their promise to let unmarried couples reunite in France, after France's Secretary of State in charge of tourism, Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, tweeted in early August: “This virus does not like love, we do!”

READ ALSO: France's failure to act leaves long-distance lovers 'heartbroken'

Lemoyne promised the government was setting up a process that would allow partners separated due to Covid-19 to reunite. 

Initially, the line went that all long-distance couples where one person lives in France and the other person in a non-EU country would be eligible to apply for the laissez-passer (travel pass), the government said.

But according to the procedure set up on September 21st 2020, only couples of one French national are eligible to apply for the free pass. No mechanism has been set up for non-French couples where one person resides in France.

According to the rules on the French consulate in Boston, couples applying for the pass must prove:

• That their relationship began at least six months before the borders closed, so no later than September 2019.
• That they have previously been to France and that the main reason for their visit was that they were visiting their partner (which excludes professional reasons or other long-term projects).

They also 

Love Is Not Tourism – which also had been lobbying French political representatives for weeks – took to the streets of Paris to protest the delay in issuing the travel passes.