Entering France beyond vaccine certificate validity period

score:3

Accepted answer

What is the official guidance for my case? Do you know a website on whose information I can really rely on?

These are the main French official websites dealing with this:

  • Covid travel bans and other rules on service-public.fr. Service-public.fr is managed by the Prime Minister's office and offers generally high quality information (legally sound, precise and relatively readable) but is not always the first to be updated.
  • Movement and travel from the government's special Coronavirus website. Gouvernement.fr is also managed by the Prime Minister's office but was mostly a PR website before Covid.
  • International travel page on the Interior ministry's web page (direct links to specific pages on gouvernement.fr). The Interior ministry is in charge of enforcing the rules.
  • Coronavirus info from the ministry of Foreign Affairs. This ministry and individual embassies publish more information in English but I often find it confusing or imprecise.

The rules changed today (February 12), a test is not required anymore if you received a full vaccination course (more on that below). Otherwise, there are restrictions based on the purpose of travel, mandatory tests before and after entry, and a quarantine recommendation.

The Interior ministry's website also offers more details on what “vaccinated” means:

  • “Vaccinated” should be understood as defined in EU law (“au sens de la réglementation européenne”) and can differ from the definition used for the pass vaccinal.
  • Since February 1st, a booster is required for everybody whose last injection is more than 9 months old.

What is de facto happening at the airport when entering, are checks being made? How strict are they? From my past travel experience in the pandemic I know that it can be quite a wide gap between official recommendations and the (non-)verification of COVID certificates of individuals at the border.

I have not been flying frequently enough to offer anything but anecdotes but I did encounter very systematic checks at Charles-de-Gaulle airport recently (a little over a month ago), even coming from another Schengen country. The checks were performed by the police, who did ask about the original point of departure (as many people including myself were merely transiting through the other Schengen airport).

IIRC, they scanned the EU Digital covid certificate (proof of vaccination) but did not ask for the proof of a recent test (the country I was coming from has been moving in and out of the green list over the last months). For international travel, I strongly recommend having some human-readable proof of vaccination (e.g. the full A4 readout of the relevant data, not merely the QR code) as many check points require more data and are not setup to scan the QR code.

I suspect that in theory it is up to the airline to check you have some proof of a negative test before letting you board (but it has also been hit and miss).

Incidentally, a valid EU digital covid certificate (so a recent vaccination) is in fact required on international trains but this hasn't been checked by anyone in over a year (and I take the Thalys once a month at least).

Upvote:0

The official rules can be found on this page and that one.

Il convient de relever que tout voyageur entrant sur le territoire français en provenance d’un pays extérieur à l’espace européen doit présenter un test PCR ou antigénique négatif de moins de 48 heures. Pour les voyageurs non vaccinés en provenance du Royaume-Uni, le délai de réalisation du test PCR ou antigénique est de 24 heures.

Any person aged 12 and over entering French territory must present a negative PCR or antigen test less than 24 or 48 hours old, depending on the country of origin.

The government announced yesterday that rules are going to be relaxed soon for people fully vaccinated (i.e. with a booster or two jabs and a recovery certificate) but it is not yet published.

According to your status, you would need a less than 24 h old PCR or antigen test. I can't tell how strong the rules are enforced. That certainly vary depending on the transportation method (car, train, plane...) but I have no doubt that there are more people unchecked than checked.

End of March is far. We switched many times between optimism (the current trend) and pessimism (new variants and waves) so anything can change before your arrival. Some media start to talk about a possible end of the pass vaccinal by the end of March.

Upvote:1

https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr/le-ministere-et-son-reseau/actualites-du-ministere/informations-coronavirus-covid-19/faq-covid-19-les-reponses-a-vos-questions/#sommaire_1:

Depuis le 1er février 2022, pour que leur schéma vaccinal reste reconnu comme complet, les personnes de 18 ans ou plus souhaitant entrer sur le territoire national doivent avoir reçu une dose de vaccin à ARN messager complémentaire au plus tard 9 mois suivant l’injection de la dernière dose requise.

Translation:

Since February 1, 2022, in order for their vaccination schedule to remain recognized as complete, people aged 18 or over wishing to enter the national territory must have received a dose of complementary messenger RNA vaccine no later than 9 months following the injection of the last required dose.

Sounds like you'll have to take a covid test to enter, unless you are one of the exceptions.

Upvote:2

You may take a booster if one is offered in your country. A booster is not required to enter the country but most public places like restaurants etc will accept a health pass for which a booster shot is required if 4+ months have passed post your second dose of mRNA vaccine.

I have found that the wordings in the official website might be a bit confusing. An unofficial version of the explanation can also be found at https://thepointsguy.com/news/french-vaccine-pass/

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