European Commission Greenlights Digital Green Certificate for Safe Free Movement inside EU

The Commission tabled on Wednesday a regulation on a digital green certificate, a "temporary" measure supposed to facilitate safe free movement inside the EU during the Covid-19 pandemic. It will verify that a person has been vaccinated against Covid-19, received a negative test result or recovered from the virus infection.

According to the proposal the document will be available free of charge, in digital or paper format and will contain a QR code to ensure security and authenticity of the certificate.

The EU executive will build a gateway to ensure all certificates can be verified across the Union, and support Member States in the technical implementation of certificates.

It is for EU countries to decide which public health restrictions can be waived for travellers but will have to apply such waivers in the same way to travellers holding a green certificate, the Commission explains.

With this digital certificate, we aim to help Member States reinstate the freedom of movement in a safe, responsible and trusted manner, emphasized EC President Ursula von der Leyen during the virtual news conference after the College took the decision.

We also adopted a Communication laying down a common path to a gradual, safe and lasting re-opening and it points out what we need to do to get there - including a common framework for response measures, and measures covering everything from testing, treatments and vaccine sharing, she said.

"These both points are aiming at the re-opening, but a pre-condition for that is vaccination and vaccines," the EC President stressed.

Specifying that digital green certificate will not be a pre-condition to free movement and it will not discriminate in any way, Commissioner for Justice, Didier...