“The quarantine issue is absurd,” said Portuguese Minister of Foreign Affairs Augusto Santos Silva during a televised interview with RTP.
British travellers make up Portugal’s largest tourist share, with 2.1 million visitors in 2019 and revenue of €3.3 billion.
London announced Friday that travellers arriving in England from more than 70 countries or territories, including most EU countries apart from Portugal or Sweden, will be exempt from quarantine from 10 July.
The Portuguese foreign minister admitted that certain sources of contamination in the Lisbon region were “worrying”, but that this should not prevent the British from spending their summer holidays in the southern Algarve region.
First praised for its management of the health crisis when its population was confined, Portugal has since seen the number of new daily cases jump by a third between May and June, mainly due to outbreaks located in Lisbon and its suburbs.
