For nearly a year now, we’ve been monitoring the shift toward enabling digital “passports” that will allow at least some people – those wealthy and/or fortunate enough to get their hands on the vaccine – to continue traveling and going about their lives as normal, while others are forced to continue living with COVID-inspired restrictions, potentially for years.
According to a draft plan leaked to the FT, Brussels has proposed the creation of a COVID certificate to allow EU citizens who have been vaccinated, who have recently tested negative, or who can provide proof of recovery to move around the bloc more or less freely. Member states have been battling over whether a digital vaccine “passport” is appropriate, with countries like France arguing that a passport would discriminate against the poor.
Meanwhile, states like Greece and Spain, which are desperate to revive their faltering tourism industries, are arguing that the passports are essential for the economic salvation of millions of Europeans.
Notably, officials in Brussels are wary of using the term “passport”. But at this point, the march toward their adoption seems inevitable.
Brussels officials have stressed the certificate would not be a “passport” but a common system to help governments co-ordinate travel measures as vaccination programmes are rolled out across the bloc. – READ MORE
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