Portugal to allow American tourists to enter despite EU reservations

Saturday, September 4, 2021

Travellers from the United States are still permitted to enter Portugal, even for non-essential purposes such as tourism, as the latter’s government will not tighten its travel requirements for American citizens, despite the Council of the European Union’s recommendations to take such a step.

The Council of the EU urged its 27 Member States to impose stricter entry rules for travellers from the United States, including the halt of non-essential travel, after estimating that the US has recently recorded a high number of COVID-19 infections.

At the same time, the EU has also moved from its safe third countries list Kosovo, Israel, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Lebanon as the COVID-19 situation in these territories has worsened in the past two weeks.

However, Portugal will not apply such advice and will permit US travellers to enter its territory, including for tourism, provided that they present a negative result of the Coronavirus test taken 48 hours before departures, SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.

“Portugal has confirmed that discretionary, non-essential travel is still allowed, provided visitors present a negative COVID-19 test result at boarding and entry into the country,” according to a statement published by Portugal’s tourism authority, Visit Portugal.

Over 83.2 per cent of the population in Portugal are fully vaccinated, up to this point, while 95 per cent of the adult population have had at least one injection, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control notes.

Portugal hosted one million visitors from the United States in 2019, before the spread of the Coronavirus, which shows that the US has a significant impact on Portugal’s tourism industry. However, the Coronavirus situation has profoundly affected the tourism sector, among others.

According to the figures previously published by the National Statistics Institute (INE), passenger traffic in Portugal’s airports decreased by 44.6 per cent in the first six months of this year, in comparison to the same period in 2020.

However, even amid the ongoing pandemic yesterday, as SchengenVisaInfo.com reported that Portugal now permits non-essential travel from Brazil, while it also abolished quarantine requirements for arrivals from the United Kingdom, including for unvaccinated travellers. However, they will be required to present a negative result of COVID PCR or rapid antigen test before entering Portugal.

As for the Council of the EU recommendation, it has not been approved unanimously by the European countries.

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