7
Jul
2021
Watch
State of play of the implementation of the EU Digital COVID Certificate regulations (debate)
Mr President, the fact that 200 million European citizens have downloaded the Digital COVID Certificate shows the importance of this concept that was conceived in this particular House and is now implemented by the Commission. But we have to ensure now that Member States embrace the concept, that they use the concept of uniformity, of bestowing rights on all European citizens. I would be very concerned if Member States started to use the COVID Digital Certificate to confer rights and entitlement on some citizens and not on others. So from my point of view, I really want to insist that Member States – and I include my own government in that – need to ensure that everybody has access to services, be they ones that are vaccinated, tested, or in recovery. So from that perspective, I sincerely hope that the Digital COVID Certificate is not used to discriminate between citizens. Equally and finally, I want to ask Member States, and particularly my own country, to embrace the concept of rapid antigen testing to ensure that we can open up our societies and our economies and ensure that we can return to normality in a safe way. I commend the COVID certificate and I encourage everybody to download it and Member States to implement it.