European Union: EU Digital Covid certificate enforced today, 200 million issued already

“They thought it couldn’t be done, but we did it”. This is how, on his Twitter profile, this morning European Commissioner Thierry Breton pointed out that as from today all European citizens can get a “EU Digital Covid certificate”. In fact, the certification system has already been working for a few weeks now, and over 200 million of them have been issued already, because 21 member states plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein had already been working at that. “A great joint achievement from the European Commission and the member States”, Commissioner Thierry Breton commented. President Ursula Von der Leyen too emphasised this important step “in time for summer”, she wrote on Twitter, urging people to “apply for a certification today, so as to make it easier to travel across Europe” while it is reopening. In a statement issued from Brussels today, Von der Leyen pointed out that such certificate “is the symbol of an open, safe Europe that is cautiously reopening, while putting the safety of our citizens’ health first”. “All Europeans are entitled to move freely, even without a certificate”, a note from the EU Commission explains, “but the certificate will make it easier to move around, so those who have one may be more easily exempted from such restrictions as quarantining”. The digital document certifies that a person has been vaccinated or has tested negative or has recovered from Covid; it is free and available in all of the EU languages, either in digital or paper format, with a digitally-signed QR code that guarantees its security.
Valentina Bombelli