The French government has announced tighter rules on travel to and from the UK that will come into force at midnight Friday /Saturday due to the explosion of Covid infections caused by the Omicron variant.
These rules, which include tighter rules and pre-departure tests and obligatory quarantine (full details here), apply to all travellers whether fully vaccinated or not.
All non-essential travel to and from the UK has been barred – including for “tourism and professional reasons”.
The French interior minister has published an attestation for leaving French territory for the the UK. All travellers, both vaccinated and non-vaccinated will need to fill it in if they travel after midnight on Friday/Saturday. The form is available here.
Travellers are warned if they don’t have an essential reason or the evidence needed to prove it then they may be barred from travel.
A separate attestation for those travelling to France under the new rules has also been published. It is available here.
It also includes the list of essential reasons for travel, one of which must be ticked. The form will need to be presented to travel companies, like Eurotunnel, where it can be uploaded or to border control.
Quarantine portal
If you meet the essential travel requirements, you will have to submit some personal details via an online platform, which has now been activated, before your return or departure to France.
You can access the platform HERE.
The site can be accessed in multiple languages. You will need to fill all the standard biographical details and declare whether you are a health worker or not. You will also be asked for a French social security number (although you can just write “0” if you don’t have one), vaccination status and the address where you will be quarantining upon arrival in France.
After filling out the form, you will be able to download an identification file. We recommend that you either save this file on your phone or print it. You are not allowed to travel without completing the form. It may be useful to carry it on you as you cross the border.
The purpose of this form is to alert French law enforcement authorities of where you will be self-isolating in France upon your arrival. The police could check that you are respecting the quarantine measures once you get here – if you are found to be violating them, you could face a hefty fine.
Remember that you must quarantine for at least 48 hours after arriving in France. If after 48 hours, you present a negative Covid test, you can leave self-isolation. If you do not take a test, you must remain isolated for 10 days according to the ministry if interior rather than the 7 days initially announced by the government spokesperson.
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Put together amazingly quickly if this decision was only made yesterday. Almost unbelievable
This was not put together overnight, the French have been planning this for weeks.
What do you make of that ?
Strange that people find that release of a few rules & a 2 page form must have been ‘planning for weeks’ as if that is a conspiracy.
1. The rules/form are essentially those that have been applied to many countries for ages – so you literally could easily draw this up overnight.
2. Since the Omicron variant news came out of SA (weeks ago), I would think it reasonable & competent to draw up contingency plans for slowing its growth in France – including measures for any country where it became widespread.
Everywhere says 7 days quarantine, but the form says 10 days??
Confused as usual!!
Yet another confusing bit of information. According to messages I am receiving from Ryanair I should have booked a Day 8 PCR test too. I thought it was an Antigen/PCR test before departure and a PCR test on or before day 2. Have I got it wrong?
At least the French don’t have to debate for hours in Parliament like a bunch of kids bickering before implementing precautions!
Democracy can be awkward. Not a problem they have in China.
I downloaded that document to fill out. Its in French, but the copy-and–paste is disabled, so I have to re-type the entire document in French to get a translation.
The document is on the French Gov website in French.
Its pretty insensitive to announce a new policy Thursday, that you have 24 hours to get out of the country, at a time when all the Eurostars are full. If they were considering this, they could have announced the possibility so that cautious people would have a few days to get out. We were in a small town on the German border Thursday night at 9 pm when I saw something about this on Facebook. With various trains being full or cancelled, I could not get to Paris until Friday 4:30 pm. Now I might be stuck I a country, with my 90 day visa about to run out.
Its kind of clear this is related to the British not giving fishing licenses and Macron getting angry at Boris for releasing some confidential letter.
My son has travelled to his fiances home in Greman for Christmas with her and her family. He plans to leave there after a week andthen drive from Gremany to France to stay with us for a few days. As he has now been in Europe for over 7 days and is travelling by car accross the border to reach us will he need any documents with him? He is double vacinated and will have had a test before he came to Germany, should he get a covid test before he leaves Germany just to be safe? I really do not know what the EU travel rules are and as there are no borders check points anyway who is going to be checking his paperwork? thanksin anticipation for you your constructive comments
All very interesting details thank you. I rely on this for up to date information and am grateful for these latest regulation details. The article seems to jump around between U.K. to France, then suddenly France to U.K. and perhaps I’ m tired but I had to keep checking if the particular paragraph referred to U.K. to France or vice versa. Rules are different of course depending on direction of travel and there seemed insufficient clarity on this.