Spain Defends “Safe Destination Coordination” with EU Digital Certification – 12/05/2021

MADRID, May 12 (EFE) – Spain’s Minister of State for Tourism, Fernando Valdes, on Wednesday called on the Schengen area countries to ease restrictions imposed on other countries, and stressed the importance of a “safe destination form” with a “digital certificate”, which allows the movement of vaccinated people who have conducted Tests or who can prove they are clear of coronavirus.

Speaking to Efe before speaking at a European Parliament symposium in Madrid on travel and tourism, Valdes highlighted the need to “start working to ease restrictions with other countries,” which, he said, is “under preparation and a vaccination plan similar to that of other members. In the European Union. “

He explained that “Spain has been working on the safe destination formula for months. There is no single procedure, it is a set of measures that we have developed since the beginning of the epidemic.”

Valdes noted that “first, it was the security protocols implemented by all elements of the tourism sector.”

Then he analyzed, “Then, we started to create harmonized mechanisms around what should be risk analysis among member states, and of course there are now measures built into this mobility matrix. The main thing is vaccination.”

Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar, chair of the Civil Liberties Committee and rapporteur of the report on the green digital certificate – whose name Parliament wants to change to EU Covid-19 certification – told Efe agency, “It is a unique digital certificate that should be valid in all member states and must be operational before the summer “.

“More specifically, so that the summer of 2021 does not look like the disaster that was the summer of 2020,” he added.

Lopez Aguilar stressed that “freedom of movement is, by far, the most valuable asset of European construction and is in very poor condition.”

Lopez Aguilar, who has advocated for “granting confidence to member states that certification will prove that the person has been immunized, and that the carrier has been vaccinated,” with a Schengen suspension and without freedom of movement, there is no recovery, neither socially nor economically, or that has a negative PCR test With guarantees and in digital format. “

He explained that the certificate will be in paper form and “must be issued automatically by health authorities in the member states and recognized by all other parties.”

Lopez Aguilar also argued that member states provide free PCR tests to citizens, as they do in France and the United Kingdom, and limit prices in private clinics, because they “cannot turn into a business, an obligation imposed on European citizens to fulfill a fundamental right.”