It’s good news France has lifted its Covid travel ban – but the industry is still under a cloud

Travel finds itself the most prominent pawn in the political games that accompany the pandemic, writes Simon Calder

“Blanket travel bans will not prevent the international spread, and they place a heavy burden on lives and livelihoods,” says the World Health Organization (Getty Images)

With presidential elections imminent in France, Emmanuel Macron is no doubt looking at every decision through the prism of political popularity. The travel ban that lifts on Friday perhaps had its roots as a robust response to Boris Johnson’s absurd quarantine decision last summer.

The prime minister and health secretary created a special category known as “amber plus” to mandate self-isolation for anyone coming in from mainland France, with no data to support the exclusion. The riposte no doubt landed well with some voters in France.

Conversely, while the futility of the ban on UK visitors was clear two weeks ago, it would not have been a shrewd political move for the president to open the frontiers while imposing tighter restrictions domestically. Even though the UK supplies one in seven travellers to France (and a much higher proportion of winter visitors to the Alps), the political gain presumably outweighed the economic pain.