Americans will soon be able to visit the European Union if they are vaccinated. The New York Times broke the news Sunday quoting Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission:

“The Americans, as far as I can see, use European Medicines Agency-approved vaccines… This will enable free movement and the travel to the European Union.

“Because one thing is clear: All 27 member states will accept, unconditionally, all those who are vaccinated with vaccines that are approved by E.M.A..” 

White House Senior Advisor on COVID Response Andy Slavitt reacted to the news late Sunday on CNN:

What the world is basically saying, they are looking at the U.S. and the success and the vaccination of the program, and while they know we are not done yet, they are saying those Americans are safe to come to our country without risk of spreading covid-19. Think about that. That’s incredible. Just a few months ago we were the first nation in the world most cutoff from travel. That shows what an incredible few months we have had vaccinating Americans, so I think we’ll find more and more things like that, both internationally and also… in the U.S. I think you are going to see increasing steps over the next few weeks on what vaccinated Americans can do in addition to just travel, because not all of us travel, that are going to be very important.

No timeline for travel to the EU was given, but the NYT reports, “Technical discussions have been going on for several weeks between European Union and United States officials on how to practically and technologically make vaccine certificates from each place broadly readable so that citizens can use them to travel without restrictions.“