EU Digital COVID certificates
More than 1,750,000 Romanians have downloaded the EU digital COVID certificate, which facilitates traveling across the EU
România Internațional, 13.08.2021, 14:00
As of August 13, upon crossing the state border of an EU country, only digital certificates are recognized as documents proving vaccination, recovery from an infection and the negative result of a test. The certificate has a QR code and certifies that the holder is either vaccinated with one of the vaccines recognized by the EU, has had the disease in the last six months, or has a negative test taken in the last 72 hours. No other document shall permit the crossing of the internal borders of the Union or the entry into a Member State of the Union without complying with the quarantine conditions provided for by the legislation of those States.But, in order to cross the border without being quarantined, this unique document is needed, used by all Member States, having the same characteristics and which the Romanian citizens can download from the website vaccinare-covid.gov.ro, Andrei Ţărnea, director of the Communication and Public Diplomacy Department with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has recently said on a private TV station.
The new provisions are found in the European Regulation on digital certificates designed to facilitate free movement during the pandemic and are applicable only for crossing the state border, not for activities within the national territory of Romania, the Strategic Communication Group in Bucharest has stated. The National Association of Travel Agencies (ANAT) has emphasised, in turn, that the obligation to present the digital certificate refers only to countries that required such documents, such as vaccination certificate, tests or proof of immunisation, as well as the return to Romania from countries on the yellow and red lists.
Tourists who return from a country on the green list do not have to present the digital certificate and shall not be quarantined, the association also states. The digital certificate is based on a unitary system that guarantees the authenticity of vaccines or tests, in order to avoid their falsification and we recommend downloading it, which is very easy, the president of ANAT, Dumitru Luca, explained.
There are places where this digital certificate is useful in circumstances other than simply crossing state borders. There are airlines that require the presentation of this certificate before boarding, for example.In France one is also required to present the document when getting on the train, entering a restaurant or when visiting a museum, and this is also valid in Italy. In Greece, the digital certificate is required when boarding the ferry. On the other hand, Bulgaria does not require the presentation of a digital certificate anywhere, not even at border crossing points.
In Bucharest, after the latest update of the list of countries of epidemiological risk, Turkey, Israel and the United States have entered the red list, which had already included Spain, Greece or Great Britain. The Netherlands and Malta, on the other hand, which were on the red list, switched to the yellow list following the drop in new cases of infection. The new list shall come into force this mid-August. (MI)
