Europe borders are starting to open but not to Americans

We have our own borders closed to Europeans, so doesn't reciprocity work that way? I think each country needs to look out for its own citizens/ residents in terms of virus transmission/ containment. We can't even form a travel bubble with Canada because they wouldn't agree to it.

Sounds like what we expected, no Europe travel anytime soon--even though some here are posting they're going to Europe before summer is done.

Nothing wrong with hoping and dreaming of a trip. But reality will interrupt that dream for the foreseeable future.

There are rumbles that Canada right even shut down the "passage to Alaska" that they were so nice to allow due to all the people who legitimately needed to travel there. Just goes to show we can't have nice things.

Good phrase there, Mark: "reality will (continue to) interrupt the dream for the foreseeable future."

And to add to Mark's great statement: "Only the Virus knows for sure."

That's a good phrase, too.
But I wonder if even the Virus knows for sure?

We have our own borders closed to Europeans, so doesn't reciprocity work that way?

It’s about safety and above all confidence, not reciprocation. In Western Europe the politicians still fear the people and as a result we’ve seen governments having to back track as feedback comes in. The EU will assume pooled sovereignty over health care and will for the first time issue sovereign debt neither were the preferred option of the politicians. Switzerland’s aid package has been forced up from the agreed 10b to 65b.

We’re only slowly starting to trust our neighbors again, we’re talking about a more green and localized tourism and we’re watching our TVs and what we’re seeing is no confidence inspiring about the US’s ability to manage this crisis. And for people of my generation that is very disconcerting because we grew up with the feeling you could rely on the US.

I expect an awful lot will depend on who the next few months will pan out with travel within the Schengen area.

To be fair, most European borders at this point are only open to other European countries. Greece might be an exception, but I am not sure there are too many others.

It’s possible Europe could open to travel from the U.S. on July 1 — there are rumbles that Schengen will open its external borders on that date. However, everything that mentions that also notes that the Europeans will establish a “red list” of countries whose visitors will not be allowed due to ongoing prevalence of the virus. You can count on finding Brazil and several other South American countries on the list, and of course it wouldn’t surprise me to see the U.S. on it as well.

(And I absolutely agree with Agnes that part of it has to do with reciprocity. But the conditions mentioned by Ufkak also play an important role.)

Kent,

Americans may not be the only ones excluded from travel in the E.U. I heard a news report today that residents of Sweden will also be blocked at the present time.

We can only control our own actions. Stay home, wear a mask when you absolutely can’t, keep your distance. Everything else will fall into place, even if it doesn’t happen at lightning speed. Stay safe and anticipate a better situation. Patience is needed.

I would not be at all surprised if EU nations close their borders to Americans. I agree with Ufkak, above. Can it be anything but sadly obvious to any observers that the US government really isn’t too interested in science, facts, reality or pubic health and safety?
Stay safe and be well.

I was just now looking at updated stats comparing the daily death rates in the US versus Europe, which compares the U.S. to a contiguous 16-country region of western and central Europe, the European area has almost identical population as the US.

Wow :-(
As of June 13th, looks like about 800 daily deaths in the US versus a little over 100 daily deaths in the corresponding area in Europe.

Kind of makes it clear why Europe, presumably, is going to be very cautious about allowing American travelers to enter Europe anytime soon--if our death rate continues to be 5 times higher than theirs.

from the website: OurWorldInData.org
cases per million people

deaths per million people

Going234: Thanks for the additional stats. So Sweden has the highest rate and the UK has slightly higher rate than the US.
But the rest of Europe has so much lower death rate than we do.
And Canada's death rate is half ours.

With the perspective of being an American in Germany, no, Europe should absolutely not allow non-essential travel from the US here. It's unfortunate, especially since everyone I know in the states has been extremely cautious for the last 3 months and are going stir crazy, but since state-wide social distancing and mask-wearing and contact tracing isn't implemented AND state borders aren't shut down - all things we essentially did here to reduce spread (if you think of European countries as states, anyway) people from the US are too high risk. I even worry about new military transfers from the US bringing more cases into the garrison, ours had the worst outbreak of any overseas garrison in the world.

It sucks - I was supposed to be in the US for this month - and I worry about my family and friends. I'm not even sure if I'm allowed to travel in Europe outside of Germany, technically it's allowed by the garrison (I think? Things change quickly but we're basically under German rules) but I'm not sure I'd be able to board a plane with a US passport. That's not on the table for us right now, regardless, we'll stick to Germany or potentially crossing nearby borders by car on road trips, for now.

@Sarah, are you worried that other countries won’t let you in because of your American passport? I’m in a similar position - American in London - and had just assumed that as I have my residency permit showing I live here, and haven’t been to the US since 2019, I would be able to go anywhere that is letting people in from the UK, but now I’m second-guessing that logic.

James, I agree that if I'm thinking about who has done "best" from the standpoint of a potential victim of the virus, I look at the death rate. But if I were responsible for setting a country's policy on admitting foreign visitors, I'd be using the infection rate. The number of deaths is a trailing indicator and will be slow to pick up on rapid spread.

Why should Europe let us in when we can't even handle going to the beach in our own state without tripling the number of cases, because "we're all going to die of something anyway"? And in my state, the state attorney general told the mayor of the largest city that his mask ordinance may be unconstitutional.

@Margaret - it's a concern, right now nobody really seems to know. I'm under the US Status of Forces Agreement (i.e. living in Germany via the US Military) which functions as my residency permit/visa. A lot of people are assuming our SOFA card is all that's needed to travel within Europe but I don't actually know if that's true currently or if it will remain that way.

I'd definitely try to consult some kind of authority before booking any trips!

Sarah, your post should have a recreation office, the one that arranges tours, etc. Thats who I'd ask.

@Stan the Garrison command has been caught unaware by the whole situation as much as anyone else. While technically we're allowed to travel internationally in Europe, airlines and other countries may have different ideas when it comes to actually boarding planes, going through passport control, etc. While travel restrictions have been lifted in many cases, there are a lot of grey areas and unknowns.