The EU Digital COVID Certificate should facilitate safe free movement inside the EU during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The certificate will be available in either digital or paper format. It will attest that a person has been vaccinated against coronavirus or has a recent negative test result or has recovered from the infection. In practice, these will be three distinct certificates.
A common EU framework will allow member states to issue certificates that will then be accepted in other EU countries. The EU Digital Covid Certificate regulation should be in place for 12 months. The certificate will not be a precondition to exercise the right to free movement and will not be considered a travel document.
To make “affordable and accessible testing” more widely available, the European Commission committed to mobilise “at least €100 million” under the Emergency Support Instrument for the purchase of tests for SARS-CoV-2 infection for the purpose of issuing EU Digital Covid test certificates.
Member states should not impose additional travel restrictions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, such as quarantine, self-isolation or testing, “unless they are necessary and proportionate to safeguard public health”.
Member states must accept vaccination certificates issued in other member states for persons inoculated with a vaccine authorised for use in the EU by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) (currently Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Janssen).
It will be up to the member states to decide whether they also accept vaccination certificates that have been authorised by other Member States following national authorisation procedures or for vaccines listed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) for emergency use. The text was approved at the June I plenary session. The Regulation is expected to apply from 1 July 2021.
Source: europarl.europa.eu
