Digital Green Certificate or EU Travel Certificate: what it is and how it works

All European citizens are longing for starting travelling again, especially now, that the summer is coming.

On the other side, European Union’s interest is to help its citizens to do so: many European counties’ economy (like Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal) are unlikely to recover until the tourist industry reopens. The idea is to guarantee people the freedom to move, as soon as possible.

In the meanwhile, Europe is working on a travel certificate that should be given to citizens across EU “without discrimination”: the Digital Green Certificate.

A new European document that will guarantee more freedom through Europe. In this article we face:

• what it is
• how it works,
• who can have it,
• which vaccines are officially recognized

What is the Digital Green Certificate?

Digital Green Certificate (or European Travel Certificate) is a new European document, that is a paper document but also a QR code, that shows that the person who is travelling has received a vaccination, a negative test (prc or antibody test) or that she or he got Covid-19 and recovered from it recently.

It will be available from June 2021.

How does the European Travel Certificate work?

It is a digital document. Vaccinated people, people who just recovered from Covid-19 or those who tested negative can travel in European Union.

This does not mean that these people can avoid quarantine.

Every country is free to set up its own restrictions, for example quarantine, and if in the arrival destination there is one further limitation everybody possessing a Digital Green Certificate must undergo to the restriction of that country, regardless if he or she is vaccinated, recently recovered from Covid-19 or negative to a test.

Who can have the Digital Green Certificate?

All European citizens and their family even if they are living outside the European Union. Some countries are participating to this EU initiative, Switzerland, for instance. It is free of charge.

Which vaccines are officially recognized by European Union?

For sure, all the vaccines that are currently circulating in Europe that means those developed by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Oxford-AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, but not Russia's Sputnik V or China's Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines, at least not yet. The members can add also other vaccines used in other counties to accept tourists or people travelling from those countries.

We all hope to return travelling as soon as possible, especially for that feeling of exchange that characterises Europe and its citizens.

To know more about Digital Green Certificate

Credits: Picture taken by Mihis Alex, Pexels