The European Commission adopted on Tuesday 15 March the second report on the impact and implementation of the EU Digital Covid Certificate, which shows that since July 2021, Member States have issued more than 1.7 billion EU Digital Covid Certificates in the EU. The European Covid Certificate also links 35 third countries to the European system through a system of equivalence decisions.
The EU Covid Certificate will also be extended until 30 June 2023, the Member States recently decided. The published report recalls all decisions taken on the Certificate since June 2021 and provides an update on Member States’ actions: for example, the additional restrictions notified to the Commission whereby possession of the EU Covid Certificate alone was no longer sufficient to move within the EU.
Between 13 October 2021 and 4 March 2022, 11 Member States - Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Latvia, Portugal and Sweden - submitted notifications to this effect. “This increase in notifications compared to the previous report can be explained by the emergency measures taken in response to the Omicron variant”, explains the Commission.
The additional requirements notified by these Member States included pre-departure testing or post-arrival testing, including for vaccinated and/or recovered travellers. In a very small minority of cases, quarantine requirements were applied. These additional restrictions had all been lifted by 4 March, the Commission said.
Link to the report: https://aeur.eu/f/rw (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)