The Diplomat
The European Parliament has approved its negotiating position on the health certificate proposed by the Commission and supported by several countries, including Spain, to facilitate the right to freedom of movement in Europe during the pandemic.
The proposal regulating the certificate for EU nationals went ahead with 540 votes in favor, 119 against and 31 abstentions, while the one focused on third-country nationals received 540 votes in favor, 80 against and 70 abstentions. The vote took place on Wednesday and the results were announced at yesterday’s plenary session. With this step taken, both the Parliament and the Council are now ready to start negotiations. The aim is to reach an agreement before the start of the summer tourist season, as Spain has repeatedly requested before the European institutions.
In the vote, MEPs agreed that the new “EU COVID-19 Certificate” – instead of “Digital Green Certificate”, as proposed by the European Commission – will be limited to twelve months, may be issued in digital or paper format and will certify at least one of three possible circumstances (without the other two being necessary): that the person has been vaccinated against the coronavirus, has a recent negative test or has overcome the disease.
In “no case” can the COVID-19 certificate be used as a travel document or become a necessary condition for free movement, underline the MEPs, who have also requested that holders of this document not be subject to additional travel restrictions, such as quarantine, self-isolation or testing, and that countries make possible “universal, accessible, timely and free testing” in order to avoid discrimination against the unvaccinated and for economic reasons.
In this regard, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha Gonzalez Laya, yesterday avoided pronouncing herself on the possibility of free PCRs. “There is an ongoing negotiation concerning the specific terms of the certificate”, she explained during a joint press conference in Madrid with her Tunisian counterpart, Othman Jerandi. “There have been some suggestions from some parliamentarians on the gratuity of the tests, and also on when and how quarantines are going to be imposed,” but these are “working hypotheses on which we are not going to pronounce ourselves before seeing the outcome of this discussion”, added González Laya, who celebrated that the digital certificate is “closer and closer to being approved in parliament”. “It is an initiative that Spain has promoted from the very beginning”, she added.
Other conditions of the European Parliament
The European Parliament has also requested that the European certificate be compatible with other initiatives at the national level, which in any case must respect the same legislative framework. Thus, Member States will have to accept vaccination certificates issued in other EU countries for people inoculated with vaccines authorized by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) – right now, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Janssen. It will be up to each Member State to decide whether they will also accept certificates from vaccinees from other European countries for vaccines included in the World Health Organization’s list for emergency use.
The certificates will be verified, as will their electronic seals, to prevent fraud and forgery. Personal data obtained for the issuance of the certificate cannot be stored in the country of destination and there will be no centralized database in the EU. The list of bodies that will process and receive the data will be public, so that citizens can exercise their right to data protection under the General Data Protection Regulation. Finally, MEPs stressed that COVID-19 vaccines must be produced on the required scale, at an affordable price and distributed worldwide and expressed concern about serious cases of non-compliance with production and delivery schedules.
On March 17, the European Commission presented two proposals for regulations, subject to the ordinary legislative procedure, to create a digital green certificate and facilitate the free movement of any person who has been vaccinated, who has a negative test result or who has recovered from the disease. The aim of this triple certificate, according to Brussels, is to “avoid discrimination against people who are not vaccinated” and to allow “all citizens, vaccinated and unvaccinated” to “benefit from a green digital certificate when traveling in the EU”.
Two days later, the Permanent Representatives to the EU approved the creation and mandate of the ad hoc Group to accelerate, as a matter of priority, the negotiation of the referenced proposals. Finally, after several meetings of the working group, the EU ambassadors themselves agreed on April 14 on a common position to start negotiations with the European Parliament. The negotiating position that the European Parliament will take to these negotiations is precisely the one that was approved last Wednesday.
