Name: EU leaders agree to introduce COVID-19 vaccine passports | DW News
Uploaded: 2021-02-26T18:31:03.000Z
Duration: 5 min 32 s
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back here in Europe, you leaders have agreed to develop a cove, it 19 vaccine passport that could ease border crossings and allow people more freedom to travel again.

You leaders met for a virtual summit to discuss coordination there.

Already under pressure over a lagging vaccine roll out, Germany's chancellor says it will be at least three months before a vaccine passport system is up and running, with slow vaccinations, corona virus variants, border chaos and summer holidays at risk.

There was no shortage of talking points at this virtual you summit.

During a four hour video call, leaders try to find a united way forward in the fight against the pandemic.

Decide with you lagging behind on vaccination numbers and new variants spreading rapidly across the continent.

The B 117 is by now in all member states, but one.

The South African variant is in 14 member states and the Brazilian variant in seven, so there's a lot of challenge ahead of us.

Apart from ramping up vaccine manufacturing and easing production bottlenecks, the you will put more energy into detecting these more contagious and dangerous mutations through a dedicated program.

With spring on its way, tourism has made it back to the agenda.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was one of the first leaders to call for an EU wide vaccination certificate in an attempt to ease travel restrictions and save this summer holiday season.

That's something all leaders could get behind.

But how and when exactly this vaccine passport could be rolled out is uncertain.

I am not a programmer, so I cannot make any guarantees like I cannot guarantee vaccine deliveries.

But the political requirements are to reach this goal within the next few months way.

But for the moment, member states have agreed that tourism and all non essential travel is not an option.

Well, for more on this, I'm now joined by our Brussels bureau chief Alexandra Phenomenon Alexandra.

Well, presumably within the next three months?

That is what German Chancellor Angela Merkel said after the meeting.

But she didn't want to commit to any specific date because, as she stressed, there are a lot off details that are still being worked on in Berlin but also in Brussels, the European Commission would like to see an you white certificate and if not, then they want to make sure that national vaccine certificates will be recognized in every member state.

But I think it's fair to say that what we saw yesterday was really progress compared to all the discussions going out going on for weeks.

Now we have this broad agreement that since certificates are coming, So when I have this passport in the summers, the chancellor indicated, will I be able to travel the you freely like I used to?

Well, that's of course, the question, but I don't have any answer for you yet because that is something that EU leaders did not agree on, Angela Merkel said.

That vaccine certificate doesn't necessarily mean that you are allowed to travel.

French President Macron was also a bit skeptical, saying that you know, we have to make sure that no one is going to be discriminated against because we don't have enough vaccines because young people still have to wait to be vaccinated.

But I think that the pressure is really growing from from different member states, saying we need to open up trouble.

We need to open up tourism three Austrian Chancellor Sebastian quotes warned the European Union that if there are not going thio do it together, Austria will go it alone.

So to have this passport to get this passport first you have to get a vaccination.

So what have you leaders said they want to do about the embarrassingly slow vaccine?

Roll out well, They said that anything that is necessary has to be done to speed up their rollout.

To ramp up the production, there is a new task force that has apparently be able been able Thio identify potential location that could be used to ramp up the production and also ARF underlying the head off.

The European Commission stressed during the meeting that, you know, trying to calm down.

I think everyone that deliveries are increasing, that we are going to see more vaccines arriving in the next quarter.

But of course you leaders are under a lot of pressure to deliver progress to deliver results to the populations, and they were also talking about a possible complete, uh, export ban for vaccines.

Thio introduced it because at the moment the European Commission is just controlling who is exporting vaccines out off the European Union.

But there is no export ban and it waas not agreed upon that is going toe be one in the future.

Our Brussels Bureau Chief Alexander Phenomenon there.

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EU leaders agree to introduce COVID-19 vaccine passports | DW News

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