Germany, Greece and five other countries have already started issuing the European corona travel pass on Tuesday.
The switching point through which EU countries can read each other’s so-called digital Covid-19 certificates has been in the air since Tuesday. The Netherlands sees no point in starting now because the EU rules on which the certificate is based will not effect until July 1.
The corona travel card, which should make travelling within Europe easier again, works with a QR code. Greece can read the QR code of, for example, a Danish traveller and see whether he can be admitted without an additional corona test or quarantine because he has been vaccinated, tested negative or is protected by a previous infection. The switching point makes that possible “in a safe and privacy-friendly way”, the committee assures.
Germany, Greece, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Poland and Bulgaria immediately started issuing the certificate on Tuesday, the European Commission says. The German introduction is only very partial, so that Germans, for example, cannot have their certificate scanned upon arrival in, say, Bulgaria. The certificate is also not yet available for all Germans, but it is already available for, for example, all Danes and Croats.
The EU rules take effect on July 1. Countries that want to start with the certificate earlier must do so with their own legislation.