Controversy is growing in Europe over the Covid-19 passport, what is it and what is it for?

As recorded this Friday, the everyday like, the Europe of 27 remains, for the moment, somewhat skeptical about this measure. While it is true that, as confirmed by the director of the Center for the Coordination of Health Alerts and Emergencies (CCAES), Fernando Simon, there is an agreement for its sanitary use; there is no such consensus when its use is directed towards the mandatory need to be vaccinated to travel through the European Union.

“It seems to me a very useful tool to promote mobility, but we have to be careful and focus more on the management of patients,” said Simón, who illustrated the use of this passport for health. “For example, the passport could be used so that if a citizen receives the first dose in Spain but has to emigrate to another country for professional reasons, he can receive the second dose there,” he said.

One of the objectives of the European Union is to revitalize the tourism sector, which has been one of the most affected by the pandemic. The economies of some countries like Greece, Italy or Spain depend heavily on tourism, so they asked the European Commission to study how economic activity could be strengthened without affecting the transmission of the virus in the territories.

One of the four fundamental freedoms of the European Union is free movement through the countries that are part of it. So, the limitation of mobility by the vaccination passport will be one of the aspects which the European Commission will have to face in order not to infringe the freedoms of citizens.

This is the main reason why several countries, including France and Belgium, have openly spoken out against the measure. The Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sophie Wilmes, positively appreciated the existence of a European system that stores all information about the coronavirus, but He asked the European Commission to “respect the principle of non-discrimination because the vaccine is not compulsory and its access has not been generalized”.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has expressed its rejection of the measure, because “vaccines cannot be an obligation to travel, since their effects on the reduction of infections or the duration of immunity are not known”.

The vaccination passport is not a measure based on scientific criteria of the highest world health organization. In addition, in their weekly epidemiological report, they point out that it is not recommended that people belonging to risk groups “travel to other countries with high transmission of the disease, regardless of whether they have been vaccinated ”.