In a Statement published on Tuesday 4 May, the Council of Europe’s Committee on Bioethics examines the challenges of “vaccine passes” in light of fundamental freedoms and makes recommendations on the management of digital tools.
It welcomes the work on harmonisation and interoperability of vaccination certificates at European and international level (proposed in March by the European Commission, digital green certificates should be launched at the end of June: editor’s note) but recalls that the digital tools implemented must respect the principles of necessity, proportionality, and non-discrimination. Strict compliance with data protection law must be applied when setting up databases, the Committee reaffirms.
As part of this, it recommends “decentralised solutions both for the storage of the data contained in these certificates, for example, on users’ mobile devices, and for the data collected by national IT systems supporting vaccination programmes”.
The scaling up of vaccine production and administration remains essential if we are to achieve a gradual lifting of restrictions on individual freedoms, the Committee also recalls, echoing a document published by the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Marija Pejčinović Burić.
Link to the Statement: https://bit.ly/3nPWbOD (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)