Thirteen European business travel buyers’ associations have issued a joint call for a Europe-wide approach to enable companies to quickly resume business travel. The associations have called for business travellers to be able to avoid quarantine if they are vaccinated or have tested negative and for the implementation of standardised digital health certificates.
The declaration is signed by Austria’s ABTA, Belgium’s BATM, Denmark’s DBTA, Finland’s FBTA, France’s AFTM, Italy’s AITMM, the Netherlands’ NATM and Cortas, Norway’s NBTA, Spain’s aegve, Switzerland’s ASTM, Sweden’s SBTA, and Germany’s VDR.
The declaration reads: “Business trips domestically, across Europe and globally, as well as trade fairs and congresses, are foundations for current and future wealth creation. Our member companies send their engineers out into the world to build plants, commission sales staff to complete new orders globally, and send scientists to institutes and to conferences to facilitate scientific exchange, just to mention a few examples.”
The associations have made three demands:
• The implementation of digital health certificates. With the EU Digital Green Certificate as a standard, domestic health certificates in many European countries, CommonPass and/or IATA TravelPass, there are plenty of initiatives for digital health certificates. Interoperability between various digital health certificates in Europe and globally is essential. The group calls for the introduction of such digital certificates as soon as possible, to allow business travellers to move again without restrictions in Europe, and possibly even globally.
• No quarantine for healthy travellers when crossing borders. Business travellers should be allowed to cross borders free of quarantine if they have either recovered from Covid-19, are vaccinated, or can present an up-to-date negative PCR test.
• Re-open Europe coherently. Restarting business travel in Europe is not only a matter for the European Union or EFTA. All European countries, of course including Norway, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, should act in an aligned manner to open their borders for much needed business travel.
VDR managing director Hans-Ingo Biehl said: “We are sending a strong signal of unity with the aim of making concrete proposals to political decision-makers across national borders on how business trips can be carried out safely and efficiently again in the future.
“The measures taken by state institutions will be one of the decisive factors in determining whether the economic recovery can also succeed in business travel activities. Travellers and companies need travel facilitation, reliable information, clear guidelines and less bureaucracy in order to be able to combine efficient travel organisation, corporate welfare obligations and applicable regulations.”
Fuente: businesstravelnewseurope.com
