Prime Minister Boris Johnson defended the UK’s quarantine restrictions today but confirmed the government is looking at air corridors and acknowledged it could be a topic of discussion when he meets French leader Emmanuel Macron this week.
Johnson is due to meet the president of France on Thursday.
Leading the government coronavirus briefing on Tuesday, Johnson insisted: “The reason for having the quarantine is simple – we don’t want to re-import the disease when we have it under control in this country.”
But he added: “We are certainly looking at air corridors.”
He promised a relaxation of the blanket quarantine restrictions introduced on June 8 “as soon as we can do so safely”.
Johnson was asked to respond to a Spanish government minister’s suggestion that Madrid could impose reciprocal quarantine restrictions on UK visitors, and whether his meeting with Macron would include discussion of a travel corridor between the UK and France.
The prime minister said: “Obviously, I will be talking to Emmanuel Macron about all sorts of things to bring our governments closer together, and [talking] to Spain.”
Spain’s foreign minister Arancha González Laya said on Tuesday that the country is considering a 14-day self-isolation requirement for visitors from the UK when it reopens its borders to EU travellers on June 21.
The country brought forward the end of its current 14-day quarantine restrictions from the planned relaxation date of July 1 at the weekend.
González Laya told the BBC: “We will be checking what the UK will be doing . . . to see whether or not we should be introducing reciprocity.”
She said Madrid was keen to “engage in a dialogue with the UK authorities to make sure we both take the message that best corresponds to the health situation, which today is a little bit better in Spain than it is in the UK”.
Spain is likely to be among the first countries to develop a travel corridor with the UK, with UK quarantine restrictions to and from EU destinations expected to be relaxed from the end of June.