Video Summit of EU Member States… Maintaining restrictions such as non-essential travel
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on the 25th (local time) that a digital novel coronavirus infectious disease (Corona 19) vaccination certificate that will allow people to travel in the European Union will probably be available before summer, Reuters reported.
Prime Minister Merkel said at a press conference in Berlin that day after videoconferences between EU member states’ leaders, “everyone agreed that we need a digital vaccination certificate.” He said it would take about three months for the executive committee, the executive branch, to lay the technical groundwork for such documents.
He added that although the EU Commission has already done some technical preliminary work, it will take additional time to develop such a digital certificate, which could lay the groundwork for third-country nationals to travel to the EU.
In the meantime, opinions have diverged among EU member states over the issue of introducing a corona 19 vaccination certificate or a’vaccine passport’, but Bloomberg reported that the agreement came closer to the agreement at this meeting.
In particular, sources told Bloomberg that Prime Minister Merkel, who had been skeptical, has eased the position. In Germany, France, and Belgium, there are not many people who have been vaccinated yet, and there is a possibility of spreading the virus even after the vaccinators have been vaccinated.
On the other hand, Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Denmark wanted to introduce a’vaccine passport’ as one of the measures to save the tourism industry. Some EU member states, such as Sweden, announced that they would introduce it. This is an initiative to ease restrictions on quarantine measures, such as issuing a kind of certificate to people who have been vaccinated against Corona 19 so that they can travel or go to restaurants or concerts.
In a statement released after the meeting, EU member states said they urged to continue working on a common approach to vaccination certificates, and that they would discuss the matter again later. They also stated that strict restrictions should be maintained due to the spread of the mutant virus, and added that non-essential travel needs to be restricted for the time being.
In addition, EU member states stressed that efforts to accelerate vaccine supply and vaccine approval should be strengthened. The EU Commission said that the vaccine delivered to the EU so far was 51.5 million doses, and 29.1 million doses were vaccinated, and 5% of EU citizens received the first dose.
/ Reporter Kihyuk Kim [email protected]
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