Digital vaccination certificates enabling people to travel in Europe despite the coronavirus pandemic will probably be available before the summer, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said after a virtual EU summit on Thursday. Germany was one of the opponents of the certificate.
“Everyone agreed that we need a digital vaccination certificate,” Merkel told a press conference on Thursday, adding the EU Commission would need around three months to create the technical basis for such documents.
Following the virtual EU Summit, European Council President Charles Michel issued a statement noting on the issue: “We also discussed vaccination certificates. We agreed to continue our work on a common approach. More work needs to be done – on digitalisation and on cooperation with the World Health Organisation. But tonight we felt more and more convergence among us on this important topic. The European Council will revert to this matter.”
Greece and Austria have been urging other EU states to adopt coronavirus vaccination “passports” which could help revive Europe’s stricken tourist industry. The idea of such a document, likely to be a certificate, would be to permit those who have been vaccinated to travel freely within the EU.
The proposal was put forward again during the EU leaders Summit on Thursday. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis reiterated his proposal for a Europe-wide vaccination certificate.
He reportedly noted that “the sooner the EU makes a decision on such a document, the better, otherwise the private sector and the giants of technology in particular will assume such an initiative themselves.”
He said further that such a document would not carry the weight of a health passport; on the contrary, it would “open a high-speed lane for movement, without the restrictions of diagnostic tests and obligatory self-isolation.”
Facilitating movement does not relate to countries with a high number of tourists only, it also relates to air transport and the hospitality sector, he said.
Vaccination Certificate Skeptism
A vaccination passport faces opposition from some of the bloc’s 27 member states.
France and Germany said that such documents could be premature because data on the efficacy of vaccines in preventing a person from carrying or passing on the virus is incomplete.
There are also concerns that enabling a vaccinated minority to enjoy foreign travel while others, such as young people who are not seen as a priority for inoculation, continue to face restrictions would be discriminatory.
A further complication is the rapid spread of more contagious Covid variants – the English, South African and Brazilian forms – and the possibility of future mutations. So it is more likely that people will need booster jabs to remain protected.
Greece – as well as Israel – already has digital vaccination certificates, and others such as Denmark and Sweden have talked about developing them.
Certificate and British tourists
Greek Deputy Prime Minister Akis Skertsos told the BBC that a common digital certificate “is not discriminatory at all”. He argued that non-vaccinated tourists could also visit Greece this summer, but the procedure for them would be slower – they would have to be tested and might have to self-isolate on arrival.
Greek Tourism Minister Haris Theoharis told British media a few days ago that Greece was in “technical talks” with UK to allow Britons with vaccination to travel to the country from May 2021.
Just a little advise for text correction. The header of this article says “EU leaders agree on digital vaccination certificate but NOT BEFORE summer”, but the text in the first paragraph says “Digital vaccination certificates enabling people to travel in Europe despite the coronavirus pandemic will probably be available BEFORE the summer, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said…”. Which statement is true?
We don’t need a vaccine passport….we need governments with common sense who allow people to die from the correct problems and not stick a swab up their nose before the end so they can blame it on corona.. It is well documented that due to the restrictions of wearing masks..isolation and forced closure of many businesses the unfortunate results are an enormous increase in domestic violence, suicides and poverty to the brink of starvation and that the masks are causing bacterial infections ..People should be able to breath fresh air and love each other ..a hug and a kiss is the better medicine.!! It is time that we are told the truth about what’s behind this pandemonium..as the truth is not called covid, as that was around years and years ago…they just gave it a new number..19.. Never in history have the healthy people of the world been locked up and been subjected by the continuous scare mongering of the MSM and their governments which raises the question of
“who is pulling the strings”???? The answer will be..”follow the money”!!!
WAKE UP AND SMELL THE VIRUS!
freedom of speech is apparently also restricted…when the truth is told in this comment section..it never sees the light of day…. !!!!
Why do you bother to ask for a reply??? if your intentions are to silence anyone who questions the restrictions forced upon all of us by the very people who are supposed to protect us?????