Vote on EU COVID Certificate that will bring back freedom of movement
Coronavirus
The European Parliament will debate and vote on the agreement with the Commission and Council on the EU Digital COVID Certificate. With this certificate travellers will be able to show an app or paper at EU borders or to transport companies to show that they have been vaccinated or have recently tested negative or recently recovered from Covid-19. The certificate should not form the basis for new travel restrictions, but should make free movement of people across European borders easier. Thanks to the European Parliament, additional travel restrictions such as quarantine or extra testing should be lifted.
Tineke Strik, Greens/EFA MEP and shadow rapporteur in Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs comments:
"This certificate will make travel within the EU easier again. This is something many Europeans have been waiting a long time for and now we can say that free movement of people is soon a reality again. We also managed to guarantee important rights: no invasion of privacy, no inequality through expensive tests and no discrimination. It is welcome that the certificate must meet the highest standards for privacy. Data on the certificate may not be stored when it is scanned and travel movements cannot be tracked. We will closely monitor if Member States will respect these safeguards, and if they will not impose additional travel restrictions without a very urgent and evidence-based reason.”
"Unfortunately, and despite the broad support for it, testing will not be free throughout the EU. If testing is mandatory for travel in the EU, it is our view that it should be free. It's unfair that you have to pay for a test if you haven't had the chance to be vaccinated, while vaccination is free. However, a first step has been taken to make testing affordable: at the insistence of the European Parliament, at least 100 million euros will be made available to make testing affordable. But we continue to press for more money to be made available to ensure that all citizens once again can travel across the EU on equal terms."
