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Italy will cut quarantine for vaccinated travellers from US, Canada and Japan, Draghi promises

Italy wants to allow tourists from the United States, Canada and Japan to visit without quarantine if they have been vaccinated, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi has said.

Published: 13 May 2021 10:30 CEST
Italy will cut quarantine for vaccinated travellers from US, Canada and Japan, Draghi promises
Tourists take picture in Rome in summer 2020. Photo: Vincenzo Pinto/AFP

“Our goal is to reopen Italy for tourism, domestic and international,” Draghi said as he answered questions from parliament on Wednesday evening.

“The pandemic has had vast economic effects on the tourism industry and we’re working to get it going again as soon as possible and in maximum safety.”

While the first step is to vaccinate as many residents of Italy as possible before the summer, Draghi said, he also indicated that Italy would revise its strict rules on entering from overseas. 

READ ALSO: Which countries will Italy reopen to in May?

The government will support quarantine-free travel for vaccinated visitors from “in particular the United States, Japan and Canada”, he promised, without giving details of when Italy would change its entry requirements.

Last weekend Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio suggested that tourists from the US would be allowed to return from June, the month that the European Union has pledged to reopen to vaccinated or tested travellers from outside the bloc.

In recent days government ministers have repeatedly indicated that a change in Italy’s travel rules is imminent without giving a firm date, to the confusion and frustration of people trying to finalise holiday plans. 

READ ALSO: How the Italian government has left tourists angry and confused about summer plans

Leaders of the G7 countries – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, the US and the EU – are due to meet from June 11-13th, with travel sure to be on the agenda. An agreement on resuming tourism could follow soon after.

Draghi also pledged to expand “Covid-tested” flights, which allow passengers to skip quarantine if they test negative for coronavirus before departure and on arrival, to “more airlines, more routes and more airports”. 

Currently such flights are only in operation between New York or Atlanta in the US to Rome or Milan.

“We will however maintain all precautions necessary for countries in which Covid and its most dangerous variants are known to be widespread,” Draghi said.

Italy has banned travel from India, Bangladesh or Sri Lanka until at least the end of May in response to the highly infectious new variant spreading rapidly in India and neighbouring countries.

READ ALSO: 

Travellers from EU or Schengen countries, as well as the UK or Israel, are allowed to visit Italy but are subject to testing and a five-day quarantine.

Tourists from Australia, New Zealand, Rwanda, Singapore, South Korea or Thailand are also admitted, but must quarantine for ten days.

Meanwhile travellers from the US, Canada, Japan or any other country outside the EU are only allowed to enter Italy for essential reasons, not including tourism. Those permitted to enter must quarantine for ten days, unless they take a Covid-tested flight.

Stay up to date with Italy’s travel rules by following The Local’s travel section and checking the Italian Health Ministry’s website (in English).

Member comments

  1. This would normally be considered good news, but for those who made plans based on the prime ministers and tourist ministers recent past statements it is of much consequence. The possibility of going to Italy in late June rather than any day now will cause many people to to change and cancel yet again.

  2. Probably cancelling all of our reservations in Italy tomorrow and going to Spain instead since they put out dates now and an actual plan. As much as I hate to miss Italy again this year, I also hate it for all of the people in Italy who depend on tourism. Just cancelling our reservations is thousands of dollars that will be spent elsewhere.

  3. If being vaccinated I can still catch and transmit the virus, what’s the point. Shouldn’t a negative test be the gold standard? Additionally, the vaccines have zero efficacy on the variants, so proof of vaccination does not protect Italy from people infected with a variant.

    1. The Vaccines are very effective against the variants specially if your end-point is severe illness and death, less so if your end-point is symptomatic spread

    2. I dont disagree about testing however. I was making the rules, I would require vaccination proof PLUS negative test, not either / or

      1. well put msamsonond…….hoping to get to our property on Lake Garda…..from England in three weeks time……fully vaccinated with hopefully negative test…..why self isolate…not travelling by plane so in our own bubble. Italy is going to lose out unless the government sorts this out.

  4. Following on from my earlier comment……why only U.S.A Canada and Japan stated for relaxation of quarantine rules?
    Data or money?

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TRAVEL NEWS

German train strike wave to end following new labour agreement

Germany's Deutsche Bahn rail operator and the GDL train drivers' union have reached a deal in a wage dispute that has caused months of crippling strikes in the country, the union said.

Published: 26 March 2024 09:55 CET
German train strike wave to end following new labour agreement

“The German Train Drivers’ Union (GDL) and Deutsche Bahn have reached a wage agreement,” GDL said in a statement.

Further details will be announced in a press conference on Tuesday, the union said. A spokesman for Deutsche Bahn also confirmed that an agreement had been reached.

Train drivers have walked out six times since November, causing disruption for huge numbers of passengers.

The strikes have often lasted for several days and have also caused disruption to freight traffic, with the most recent walkout in mid-March.

In late January, rail traffic was paralysed for five days on the national network in one of the longest strikes in Deutsche Bahn’s history.

READ ALSO: Why are German train drivers launching more strike action?

Europe’s largest economy has faced industrial action for months as workers and management across multiple sectors wrestle over terms amid high inflation and weak business activity.

The strikes have exacerbated an already gloomy economic picture, with the German economy shrinking 0.3 percent across the whole of last year.

What we know about the new offer so far

Through the new agreement, there will be optional reduction of a work week to 36 hours at the start of 2027, 35.5 hours from 2028 and then 35 hours from 2029. For the last three stages, employees must notify their employer themselves if they wish to take advantage of the reduction steps.

However, they can also opt to work the same or more hours – up to 40 hours per week are possible in under the new “optional model”.

“One thing is clear: if you work more, you get more money,” said Deutsche Bahn spokesperson Martin Seiler. Accordingly, employees will receive 2.7 percent more pay for each additional or unchanged working hour.

According to Deutsche Bahn, other parts of the agreement included a pay increase of €420 per month in two stages, a tax and duty-free inflation adjustment bonus of €2,850 and a term of 26 months.

Growing pressure

Last year’s walkouts cost Deutsche Bahn some €200 million, according to estimates by the operator, which overall recorded a net loss for 2023 of €2.35 billion.

Germany has historically been among the countries in Europe where workers went on strike the least.

But since the end of 2022, the country has seen growing labour unrest, while real wages have fallen by four percent since the start of the war in Ukraine.

German airline Lufthansa is also locked in wage disputes with ground staff and cabin crew.

Several strikes have severely disrupted the group’s business in recent weeks and will weigh on first-quarter results, according to the group’s management.

Airport security staff have also staged several walkouts since January.

Some politicians have called for Germany to put in place rules to restrict critical infrastructure like rail transport from industrial action.

But Chancellor Olaf Scholz has rejected the calls, arguing that “the right to strike is written in the constitution… and that is a democratic right for which unions and workers have fought”.

The strikes have piled growing pressure on the coalition government between Scholz’s Social Democrats, the Greens and the pro-business FDP, which has scored dismally in recent opinion polls.

The far-right AfD has been enjoying a boost in popularity amid the unrest with elections in three key former East German states due to take place later this year.

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