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France has moved to effectively ban all non-essential journeys from Britain into the country in response to concerns about the Omicron variant of covid.
Its Government said that, from midnight on Saturday, travellers would need an “essential reason” to be coming from the UK or Crown Dependencies – whether vaccinated or not.
French officials said that tourism or business travel would not be seen as valid reasons to enter the country.
French citizens and their families, as well as EU citizens travelling home via France, won't need an "essential" reason to travel, but they must still follow the rules for new arrivals.
Anyone entering France will also need a negative PCR or antigen test from the past 24 hours, and will have to isolate upon arrival at a registered address for seven days – or 48 hours if they can show a negative test.
France originally made the announcement in relation to the UK, but Guernsey's States and Jersey's Government confirmed this afternoon that it would apply to Channel Islands travellers.
A Jersey Government spokesperson said: “French Authorities have confirmed that the travel restrictions for UK arrivals announced today with effect from Saturday 18 December will also apply to those travelling to France from Jersey.
“Islanders planning to travel to France in the coming days and weeks are advised to consider the new restrictions, particularly in relation to essential travel reasons, before beginning their journey.
“Details of the restrictions are available at the UK Government Foreign Travel advice website.”
Jersey currently has direct links with France via Condor. Express has contacted the ferry provider for comment and is awaiting a response.
The UK recorded nearly 79,000 covid cases on Wednesday, and around 10,000 individuals are confirmed as having the Omicron variant of covid.
In Jersey, the variant is yet to be detected, although officials believe it could be here already. It was identified in Guernsey last week.
In response to a large predicted wave in the early part of next year, a spate of new measures were announced in Jersey yesterday.
They included a decision to change the definition of ‘fully vaccinated’ to only include individuals who have had their third dose of the covid vaccine more than two weeks ago from 4 January. After that time, arrivals who aren’t fully vaccinated by this new definition will have to isolate until they have a negative result.
Meanwhile, the ‘recently recovered’ rule – whereby arrivals did not need to be tested if they could prove they had had covid within 11 to 90 days of travelling to Jersey – will be suspended from 4 January.
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