MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

European Union one step closer to Green Passports

Europe plans to launch this digital health card in June with which to save the summer vacation season

The European Commission Monday took decisive steps towards the creation of a “green” or “vaccine passport” through a pilot test for what is viewed as the new normal.

 

“The testing phase of the digital green pass begins today in 18 member states plus Iceland,“ a spokesperson for the EU announced, who added that ”as of today, we are testing the interoperability of the facilities that will produce the passes, uploading and downloading data. Until now we do not use real data, but test data, but, as of June 1, member states will be able to upload real data. real.“

 

The European Commission is developing a unified data centre platform that allows different national applications to ”communicate“ with each other, thus making travel between EU countries. It is the testing of this unified database that started Monday.

The Digital Green Pass ”is on the right track, construction is on schedule and will be ready this summer,“ the spokesperson quoted by the Italian news agency ANSA added.

The source added that “we are confident that we will finish the works in the period of time we have always talked about,” meaning by the end of May.

Europe plans to launch this digital health card system in June with which to save the summer vacation season, by allowing travellers to prove that they have been vaccinated against Covid-19 or have tested negative.

The pass, issued by a doctor or health centre, would contain a QR code with pre-authenticated information that the traveller has been vaccinated against the virus or has had a negative result in the PCR test.

The QR code, printed on a piece of paper, would serve as proof of immunity. It would also be possible to scan the code into a smartphone app.

The apps are being created by the EU member states. France, for example, has already been testing its application for a couple of weeks for airline flights. And in Germany, a team led by IBM is creating one application for users and a second “verification” application for officials, such as airline personnel or border guards: a “green” result means that the health card is authentic; “red” it is not.