COVID-19 | The updated Ministerial Decree of Minister of the Interior Annelies Verlinden (CD&V) confirms leisure travel outside Belgium and within the European Union and the Schengen Area will be allowed from 19 April. That is after the Easter School Holiday. 

This concerns travel leaving Belgium and entering Belgium. The ban on leisure travel was introduced on 27 January. The European Commission was clearly not amused by this breach of the freedom of movement within the EU. Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders, a Belgian, reminded this on Friday.

The government still discourages such trips strongly. There are still terms and conditions. Anyone staying in a red zone for 48 hours or more must go into quarantine upon arrival in Belgium. 

On Friday 19 March, Prime Minister Alexander De Croo (Open Vld) was adamant Belgium will have the necessary systems and strategies into place to check if tourists get tested and respect the quarantine rules.

Out and in

So we will be allowed to go abroad. But obviously destinations have their own sets of rules, conditions, coronavirus countermeasures and expectations. One must be allowed to exit country A and enter country B. 

Four weeks to go.

Meanwhile, virologists and other experts are pleading a hort (four weeks) total lockdown to stem the rising contamination statistics. 

As a reminder

Member states of the European Union: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden.

The Schenen Area: Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark (excluding Greenland and the Faroe Islands), metropolitan France, Germany, Hungary, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland.

Note that the Federal Public Service (FPS) Foreign Affairs also takes Vatican City, San Marino, Andorra and Monaco into account.

United Kingdom‘s travel fate is unclear.