Holidaymania is gripping Germany, after the government announced it would lift coronavirus travel warnings for most countries from July 1. 

Germany eases travel restrictions for summer

“With the summer, hope and confidence are returning to Germany. In many places, the number of infections is falling and more and more citizens are vaccinated,” Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Friday. “After long months of lockdowns, we can look forward to more normalcy, and that also applies to travelling.” 

In concrete terms, the federal government will lift its general recommendation against tourist travel abroad from July 1. From this date on, the travel warning will only apply to countries posting a coronavirus case rate higher than 200 per 100.000 inhabitants within seven days, or where variants of COVID-19 have spread widely. Currently, that list includes only around 40 out of the 200 countries worldwide. 

For other areas no longer classified as high-risk, travellers will in future only be required to exercise “special caution” - and will not face entry restrictions on their return to Germany. Note that the change only affects residents and citizens of Germany. It does not automatically grant entry to Germany to citizens of countries previously subject to the travel warning.

Maas warned that the presence of variants meant “the danger from the virus and its mutations is far from over” and therefore appealed to holidaymakers to not see the lifting of the warning as an “invitation to carelessness.” He said that “travel with reason and a sense of proportion” should guide people’s actions this summer, and that new variants could well cause new restrictions in future.  

US, Canada and other countries removed from RKI risk list

The news came shortly after the Robert Koch Institute announced that it had removed a number of countries - including the US, Canada, Austria, Ukraine, Cyprus, Lebanon, and some regions in Portugal, Norway, Croatia, Switzerland and Greece - from its latest list of risk countries. The changes came into effect on Sunday, June 13. 

The change caused a surge of bookings over the weekend, as hundreds of thousands of German residents made plans to travel over the next couple of weeks. 

For the time being, all passengers travelling to Germany by plane must still present a negative test result, proof of vaccination or proof of recovery before being allowed to depart, whether or not they have spent time in a risk area. Anyone returning from a high risk area must still quarantine for 10 days on their return