Reader question: Can I travel to France if I am fully vaccinated?

Question: I have received both doses of the vaccine in the UK, so do the new travel restrictions apply to me or can I still travel?

Congratulations on the vaccine, but at present travel rules apply in the same way even to the fully vaccinated.

There are talks going on at bilateral and EU level about vaccine passports and exemptions for the fully vaccinated, but at present the rules for entering France are the same whether you are vaccinated or not.

Anyone over the age of 11 entering France needs to present at the border a negative Covid test. There are only a few groups exempt from the testing requirement, mostly cross-border workers and hauliers, you can find the full list here.

You also need to fill in a declaration stating that you do not have Covid symptoms, have not been in contact with any Covid patients and you agree to abide by relevant quarantine and travel restrictions - you can find the form HERE.

The rest of the rules depend on where you are travelling from;

• If you're coming from the UK after May 31st you can only enter France if your journey is essential, you need a negative Covid test less than 48 hours old and must quarantine for seven days. Full details here
• If you're coming from within the EU or Schengen zone you can travel for any reason and do not need to quarantine - full details here
• If you're coming from Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Israel, Japan and Singapore you can travel for any reason but you need to quarantine for 7 days (doing this in your own home or with friends/relatives is fine and there are no checks in place) - full details here
• If you're coming from a non-EU country that is not on the above list, you can only travel for essential reasons, full details here.

Obviously, also check your home country's rules and recommendations on travel to France. Travelling against official government advice can invalidate travel insurance policies.  

When will this change?

Any vaccine passport in France definitely won't come in before June 9th, when France introduces the health passport for domestic purposes such as going to concerts.

The EU has come to an agreement on EU-wide recognition of passes with a provisional start date of July 1st.

However, border decisions lie with individual countries within the EU, so French government will have the ultimate say on who gets to enter and what paperwork they need to show and can still decide to impose extra restrictions such as quarantine on arrivals from certain countries.

France already has its health passport app up and running - it's called TousAntiCovid and you can read about it here - but it works by scanning QR codes from vaccine certificates, which could be a problem for residents in countries that don't issue certificates with QR codes on them.

The government has said there will be an option for paper forms too, for people who don't have smartphones, but we don't yet know the full details of this.

Any vaccine pass or health passport will also have the option to upload test certificates, for people who either cannot be vaccinated or don't want to be, or proof of having recently recovered from Covid.

We will update our Travelling to France section as soon as we know more.