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COVID-19

How can travellers to France from non-EU countries prove they are vaccinated?

The French border has now reopened to fully-vaccinated travellers from many non-EU countries - but what proof will be accepted of fully-vaccinated status for arrivals from outside the EU?

How can travellers to France from non-EU countries prove they are vaccinated?
Photo: LENNART PREISS / AFP)

Under France’s new traffic light travel system for travel, fully vaccinated visitors from orange countries including the United States, Canada, and the UK can visit freely without having to justify an essential reason for their trip or quarantine on arrival. 

EXPLAINED How France’s traffic light system works for travel

They will, however, still be asked for a negative PCR test no older than 72 hours — or a negative antigen test that is no more than 48 hours old.

Non-vaccinated visitors from orange countries still have to demonstrate an essential reason for travelling, supply negative Covid-19 tests and quarantine.

In other words those who are not vaccinated are not allowed into France for a holiday or to visit friends or family or their second homes.

So who counts as ‘fully vaccinated’ in travel terms?

The French government has specified that in order to benefit from the exemptions for the fully vaccinated, travellers must

  • Have received a vaccine that is approved by the European Medicines Agency – Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca or Johnson & Johnson (known as Janssen in France) 
  • Be at least two weeks after the second injection for double-dose vaccines or for two weeks after a single dose for those people who had previously had Covid-19
  • Be at least four weeks after the injection for people who had the single dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine

And how do you prove this?

This is where things get a little more tricky.

If you were vaccinated in France then you have no problems, you can use the French Covid-tracker app TousAntiCovid to display your vaccination certificate, or show a paper certificate.

If you don’t have a vaccination certificate with a QR code – here’s what to do.

If you were vaccinated in another EU country (but are travelling from outside the EU, since travel within the Bloc does not require proof of vaccination) then you can use the certificate you were given when you were vaccinated, since the EU is co-ordinating mutual recognition of member states’ certificates. 

But if you were vaccinated in a non-EU country then things are unfortunately rather vague at this stage – particularly for people vaccinated in a country that does not issue digital certificates with QR codes.

The Local asked the French Interior Ministry for clarity on this point and were told: “It is possible for travellers to present proof of vaccination in a paper format or digitally via the TousAntiCovid app.”

However that doesn’t address the issue of whether non-EU vaccination certificates will be recognised – we have asked for a further clarification.

In the absence of an official answer, here is what we do know:

The UK has created an NHS app to people to prove the vaccination status. While the UK government says this can be used when travelling abroad there was no agreement in place as yet with either the EU or France for arrivals from the UK to prove their vaccinated status via this NHS app.

The Interior Ministry’s response above suggests that the French TousAntiCovid app is the only one currently being accepted at the border, but we have asked for further clarity on this.

The EU Commission has also been in talks with the United States about the development of a US Covid-19 certificate which EU states could accept as equivalent to its own. 

Pending any move in those talks, an EU Commission spokesperson raised the possibility that the EU Covid certificate could be made available to citizens of  the US, and perhaps other non-EU countries, on the agreement of an individual member state.

“If you’re an American not living in the EU, you could get the certificate if you ask the national authorities of a member state to give you that certificate based on some proof that you’ve been vaccinated, or had a recent Covid test,” the EU Commission spokesperson told CNN.

The spokesman did not go into detail on how this may happen in practice, and The Local has asked the Commission for further information.

If so, to adhere to the EU scheme, that document would likely need to be an official health authority vaccination certificate that bears the holder’s name and date of birth, dates when both doses were administered, as well as the name and batch number of the vaccine.

Transport Minister Jean-Baptiste Djebbari said a lack of standardised digital proof for Americans who have been vaccinated meant that they still had to provide a recent negative Covid-19 test.

“They have vaccinated lots of people but they haven’t digitised it — when you get vaccinated you often just get a sheet of paper,” Mr Djebbari told CNews on Friday.

“We’re negotiating with them – and the goal is still to open up for North America, Canada and the United States, and parts of Africa.”

We will update this story as soon as we have more information. If you are travelling, please let us know your experience with vaccine certificates at the border – [email protected]

Member comments

  1. I’m planning to travel to France from the US next month. In addition to the CDC certificate issued to me when I received my two vaccines, I have digital proof that I was vaccinated in the form of a link to the app managed by the health care system that provided the vaccine. There is no QR code associated with the app, but the information is all there in digital form, right down to which arm/s that got the jab, and the names of the individuals who gave me my shots. If that isn’t sufficient backup for my paper certificate, I don’t know what would be.

    1. You will also need a pcr test 72 hours prior to boarding (or antigen test 48 hrs prior to bo). I am also going to France from the US. My concern is what will be required to fly back to the US.

  2. Hi – one of the other articles on the local https://www.thelocal.fr/20210604/explained-frances-new-traffic-light-system-for-vaccinated-travellers/ says near the bottom:
    “Be at least two weeks after the second injection for double-dose vaccines or for two weeks after a single dose for those people who had previously had Covid-19”
    But other articles in “the local” and in the mainstream news don’t mention this possibility – Can you confirm the if what i copied is correct please. Our party of 3 planning to travel on the 15th june have all had Covid and both jabs but one of us will only have had the second jab 7 days prior

  3. What about 2 adults from the UK fully vaccinated trying to visit with their kids (say, 9 and 11 – so un-vaccinated).

  4. Covid is like a new TV series. We just finished season 3. We are on Season 4. Episode 1. Meaning who knows what can happen

  5. Hi there,

    I am planning on traveling from the US to France in the next few weeks as well. I have vaccine records from CVS, and will have taken a PCR test 48 hours before hand.

    We were also hoping to visit friends in Italy. I was wondering if anyone knows any information about traveling from France to Italy as an American?
    Since we will be coming from France, we will not be on a “COVID-Safe flight” that the Italian government has created to allow travel from the U.S. but I know that travel from France to Italy is allowed, but I don’t know if I will be allowed to travel to Italy from France as an American without being on a COVID-Safe flight – which are only available from the U.S.

    Would anyone have any ideas for me or know any details about this kind of travel between the EU?

    Thank you for your help!

    1. You have to spend 14 days in the European Union before you can enter Italy as a fully vaccinated American if you have not traveled on a Covid tested flight.

      1. Thank you very much starraeforeman. Do you know if our flight from France requires a COVID test to fly if this will be sufficient, or if it needs to be the official “COVID-safe flights”?

        Thank you for your help!

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TRAVEL NEWS

Are France’s loss-making regional airports under threat?

Just a quarter of France's airports break even financially with the rest - the smaller, regional airports - heavily subsidised by the state. But can this situation continue?

Are France's loss-making regional airports under threat?

France last year welcomed 199 million airline passengers – bringing the country numbers back to almost pre-pandemic levels. 

But it was only a handful of French airports that took in the vast majority of those millions – with Paris’ Roissy-Charles de Gaulle (CDG) and Orly airports responsible for more than half of the air traffic.

France’s Cour de Comptes counted 73 mainland commercial airports in their 2023 review of the airline sector – but only 15 of those actually break even, the rest rely on subsidies.

Some of these airports are exceedingly small, like Troyes which had just 1,562 passengers in 2023. Others, like Rodez with 31,577 passengers and Castres with 36,454 got a bit more.

Map of airports in France, including both passenger and non-passenger airports (Credit: l’UNION DES AÉROPORTS FRANÇAIS & FRANCOPHONES ASSOCIÉS – UAF & FA)

Limoges was larger, with 264,426 passengers in 2023, but it still paled in comparison to the 10.8 million that passed through the Marseille airport.

The cost of small-to-medium sized airports

The former head of the Air Transport Institute, Jacques Pavaux, authored a 2019 study on public aid to airports, finding that those with less than one million passengers per year are not profitable, noting that only 15 of France’s airports get enough traffic to be profitable.

As for the others, most have been loss-making for years, unable to continue services without significant aid from the state.

“Their chronic deficit has been filled by recurring operating subsidies granted over decades of existence. Almost half of them have never had, and will never have, any chance of reaching the traffic threshold guaranteeing financial balance,” Pavaux wrote. 

The study found that state and local authorities spend around €90 million every year to help keep the small-to-medium sized airports afloat. 

Of the 73 airports listed in the Cour de Comptes report, a little over half (38) counted fewer than 700,000 passengers a year. 

The Cour de Comptes called these “the most economically fragile”, noting that they depend on aid from local authorities to balance operations and carry out the necessary investments.

On top of that, many do not have negotiation options and find themselves competing with neighbouring airports, leaving them forced to take on contracts with low-cost airlines. 

As of 2021, low-cost air traffic represented more than 90 percent of commercial traffic for airports in Dôle, Vatry, Limoges, Bergerac, Nîmes, while it constituted all of the traffic at the Carcassonne, Tours and Béziers airports.

Over-density of airports

Some areas stand out for having a particularly high volume of commercial passenger airports, like Occitanie along the Mediterranean coast in southern France, which is home to nine.

The Cour de Comptes report found that in Occitanie 71.5 percent of regional airport traffic occurred at the Toulouse airport, followed by Montpellier with 14.4 percent.

The other seven – Carcassone, Tarbes, Perpignan, Nîmes, Béziers, Rodez and Castres – combined provided the remaining 14 percent of traffic. 

Valérie Renet, the head of the Occitanie Regional Chamber of Accounts, told France 3 that it is this ‘over-density’ that leads to financial losses, as “operating deficits are covered by public subsidies, that is to say that taxpayers’ money is used to balance the operation of these airports, usually for the benefit of low-cost companies.”

Last year, the airport of Bézers, which is “totally dependent on Ryanair”, received €5.1 million in public money to reach equilibrium, which equates to about €20.69 paid out per passenger, France Bleu reported. 

As for Ryanair, the company benefits from over €30 million in public subsidies – or €16 per passenger – from regional airports in Occitanie alone.

The picture is similar in Brittany, which is home to eight airports, though over 80 percent of traffic is concentrated in Brest, which has a little over one million passengers a year (as of 2018).

The future for small-to-medium sized airports

Building new airports has already become controversial – a proposal for a new airport at Notre-Dame-des-Landes near the city of Nantes was the subject of huge protests for years until in 2018 the project was officially abandoned.

But that doesn’t mean that the loss-making existing airports are under threat. 

In terms of what to do with the loss-making airports, Renet focused on the situation in Occitanie. She told France 3 that she was “not advocating for getting rid of the airports. They serve other needs specific to the region, not just commercial flights.”

For example, the Nîmes airport is a national hub for air rescue and civil protection operations, meanwhile ‘pelicandromes’ which are used to fight forest fires, are installed at the Béziers, Carcassone and Perpignan airports. 

Instead, Renet and the Cours de Comptes advocated for streamlining the management of airports to a regional, rather than local level. This would help to avoid overlapping flights – like a Pau-Paris and a Tarbes-Paris that take off around the same time.

The situation may also change in 2027, when the European Commission is due to examine public aid given to airports and whether large subsidies given to airports constitutes unfair competition.

There are also climate concerns, as France moves to invest more train transport to reduce carbon emissions. In 2021, the country passed a law banning domestic air links of less than two hours and 30 minutes when an alternative train option exists.

However, this law has so far only banned three routes: Orly-Bordeaux, Orly-Lyon, and Orly-Nantes.

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