France in row with Britain over discriminatory travel system

UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps admits rules are painful

France says Britain's traffic light system is 'discriminatory'. AP

France has criticised Britain’s traffic light system as discriminatory after residents were left out of a quarantine-free deal with the EU.

From Monday, fully vaccinated US and EU travellers will be able to travel from any country on the amber list without having to self-isolate at home for 10 days.

Arrivals from France - which is on the so-called amber plus list owing to concerns over Covid-19 variants – are the only exception.

"This decision is discriminatory towards French people," French European Affairs Minister Clement Beaune told LCI TV.

"It is excessive and makes no sense in terms of health policy. It has no foundation in science.”

The UK singled out France because of the government's concern over the "persistent presence" of the Beta variant, which is believed to be more resistant to vaccines.

However, France said the approach is not based on science, with the bulk of the country’s Beta cases coming from the island of La Reunion in the Indian Ocean.

Mr Beaune said the Beta strain accounted for less than 5 per cent of Covid cases in France, and mostly occurred in overseas territories from where relatively few people travelled to the UK.

UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said on Friday it was essential to have painful restrictions to avoid the importation of potentially vaccine-resistant coronavirus variants.

He said the decision to impose further restrictions on French travellers was made by the Department of Health.

"I'm looking forward to the whole world being more accessible," he told Sky News on Friday.

"We're moving in the right direction. I know it's painful, but I think that generally speaking, your viewers probably want to see us be cautious rather than sort of gung-ho on this and that's exactly what we're trying to do."

He said the UK did not want to “take chances or risks” on French travellers.

He said that having done so well with the vaccination programme it would be "tragic" if the work were to be undone by a new variant.

"We are on the cautious side of that, I recognise that, but I hope that over time we will be able to regularise the position with France, but we will have to be a bit patient. Next week will be the first opportunity to look at that."

Mr Beaune also said he regretted that travellers from the EU could still not enter the US, even though American tourists can easily come to EU countries so long as they are vaccinated or have a negative Covid test.

"We should have kept reciprocity as a trump card up our sleeves at the European level," he said.

"Perhaps Europe overall should have been tougher in the negotiations."

France on Wednesday reported just under 28,000 new Covid cases for the previous 24 hours and 40 new deaths from the virus.

A total of 111,768 people have died from Covid in France, according to health authorities.