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Covid: EU plans rollout of travel certificate before summer

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BM.GE
17.03.21 16:30
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A digital certificate to kick-start foreign travel should be given to citizens across the EU "without discrimination", officials say.
 
The aim is to enable anyone vaccinated against Covid-19, or who has tested negative or recently recovered from the virus to travel within the EU.
 
The 27 member states will decide how to use the new digital certificate.

Vaccine passports have faced opposition from some EU member states over concerns that they are discriminatory.
 
Some argue that they would enable a minority to enjoy foreign travel without restrictions while others, such as young people who are not seen as a priority for inoculation, continue to face measures such as quarantine.
 
Another issue raised has been that data on the efficacy of vaccines in preventing a person from carrying or passing on the virus is incomplete.
 
Speaking in Brussels on Wednesday, European Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders said the proposed digital certificate would be "for all EU citizens, their families when they're leaving the EU or living abroad".
 
"It'll also be for the European Economic Area (EEA), because we want to work with Norway and Iceland," he said, adding that Switzerland would also be involved.
 
Mr Reynders said there was still a lot to do to put the digital certificate in place, but the aim was to get it up and running before the summer tourist season. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis welcomed the plan, which he said would "significantly facilitate the movement of citizens and will help boost tourism and the economies that rely heavily on it".
 
The European Commission proposal sets out that any EU member state permitting vaccinated travellers to bypass restrictions such as quarantine must accept certificates from other states within the bloc under the same conditions. The vaccines should be approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA). These include drugs developed by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Oxford-AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, but not Russia's Sputnik V or China's Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines.
 
However, the proposal adds that the guidelines "should not prevent member states from deciding to accept vaccination certificates issued for other Covid-19 vaccines".
 
Source: BBC