On Tuesday, European Commission Vice President Margaritis Schinas expressed optimism that there will be an EU agreement soon on vaccination certificates, which are meant to ease travel after the pandemic, according to greekreporter.com.
In an interview with the Greek public broadcaster ERT, the EC official noted that “after the last EU Summit, I believe that there is a convergence on the need to have this digital certificate, which will be a European product and will be the same throughout Europe.”
EU Vaccination certificate proposal will be discussed on March 17
Schinas then went on to outline the European Commission’s proposal for the digital certificate, also referred to as a vaccine passport, which will be presented on March 17.
He pointed out that the Commission will present the specifications for the digital certificate, which will be the same for all of Europe, but not the exact parameters for its use.
Once the certificate proposal is revealed, he explained, two additional things need to be done: firstly, to take the decision formally, after discussion at the European Council on March 25 and the relevant councils of ministers.
Then, the technical processing required so that each member-state can permit its citizens to lock, codify and enter information into the system must be undertaken.
All 60+ Europeans should be vaccinated by end of April
Schinas said that the goal is for all these processes to be completed before the summer of 2021 when European countries that heavily rely on tourism fervently hope that travel may resume.
Remarking on the EU-wide inoculation campaigns that are ongoing around the planet at the present, the Commissioner emphasized that it was the largest and most ambitious vaccination project in all of human history.
“Never before has someone bought two doses of a vaccine from six different companies for 450,000,000 people,” he said, adding that “we are also talking about the management of a scientific miracle.”
The EC Vice President added that the rate of vaccine production was accelerating, estimating that all Europeans over 60 years of age will have been vaccinated sometime in April, while that hopefully by the end of May and certainly by the end of June, “we will have 600,000,000 doses.”
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