Italy to reopen its borders to tourists from June 3

As part of its measures to help our economy after the Covid-19 pandemic, the government announced that Italy will allow travel to and from abroad starting on June 3: for those countries belonging to the Schengen area (ie. European countries) travel will be unrestricted, which means no self-quarantine measures will be necessary.

The UK is also included in this tourism scheme, as it’s still in its transitional period after Brexit (that will end on December 31, 2020).

It might be useful to remember that the UK itself has ordered a 14-day quarantine on all travelers coming in.

Quarantine rules in Italy will continue to be in effect for extra-European countries such as the U.S., Canada or China and many more.

Former restrictions will also be lifted on travel within Italy, which means that residents will once again be allowed to freely travel from region to region, no authorization required.

There is no definite decision yet on traveling to some specific areas of Italy, such as Sardinia and Sicily, whose regional governments have asked future tourists to provide an “immunity passport” upon landing (different types of blood tests are being made available to the general public, but regardless of those thermal scanners will be deployed in all airports and ports to check everyone’s body temperature). It’s important to be aware of the fact that despite such requests, immunity passports do not exist yet.

Schengen’s freedom of movement to re-start on June 15

Roughly around the same time of the June 3 re-opening, other Schengen countries will also reopen their own borders, with freedom of movement allowed again, on top of Italy, in (at the time of writing) The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Austria, France, Spain, Denmark. More countries will be added to this list as the Coronavirus emergency gradually lets up in other parts of the continent. In spite of this, Greece won’t allow Italians to land in their country for the time being.

Do note that all of the above decisions could be called off if the situation in Italy or Europe regarding the number of Covid-19 contagions starts to get worse again.