The expected green light was confirmed on Thursday, 29 April: the European Parliament approved the proposed Digital Green Certificate—a tool meant to facilitate the return to free movement—by 540 votes in favour, 119 against, and 31 abstentions. It also adopted the equivalent proposal covering non-EU nationals by 540 votes in favour, 80 against, and 70 abstentions.
With this mandate, the European Parliament will thus be able to enter into negotiations with the Council of the EU as of 3 May. As it stated during the plenary debate on Wednesday, 28 April (see EUROPE 12708/3), the European Parliament has several red lines: it wants this tool to have real added value and to lift restrictions to free movement for those who have the certificate, such as PCR tests upon arrival or quarantine measures. It also wants PCR tests to be free of charge so as to avoid discrimination against individuals who have not been vaccinated or for economic reasons.
The European Parliament did not retain the proposal made by Juan López Aguilar (S&D, Spain), who was carrying the mandate of the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, to allow automatic recognition of vaccination certificates for vaccines that have not been authorised by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) but are authorised in the World Health Organization (WHO) Emergency Use Listing.
The adopted text thus stipulates that only vaccines authorised by the EMA can be included in this European certificate, and it will then be up to each Member State to take a decision regarding the other vaccines on the WHO list on a case-by-case basis.
The European Parliament’s mandate also comes back to personal data protection and emphasises that the data provided for the certificate cannot be stored in the Member States of destination and [that] no central database will be set up at the EU level.
“The list of entities that will process and receive the data will be made public so that citizens can exercise their data protection rights under the General Data Protection Regulation.”
Member States do not want to presuppose future difficulties with the European Parliament yet while the Council of the EU has reiterated Member States’ competence to impose health measures on their territories.
“Discussions have only just begun. Parliament has already shown its willingness by using the simplified procedure, and everyone is very conscious of the timing”, says one diplomat, whereas this tool is expected to be operational by the end of June.
Link to the adopted mandate: https://bit.ly/3gNgbzK (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)