As the European Union institutions make bigger steps towards the launch of COVID-19 Travel Certificates, more and more people are pointing towards their legality and discrimination of certain categories of people.

In an opinion for EU Observer, Belfast-based Northern Irish barrister Ciarán McCollum asserts that the freedom of movement may be the EU’s most beloved achievement, in particular among northern Europeans who benefit from the visa-free sun holidays.

Yet, according to McCollum, while the Commission assures Europeans that such certificates will not make it necessary to bring back border controls between the 26 Schengen Area countries, article 3 of the regulation establishing the certificates says the contrary,

“As it’s put in Article 3(1), there will be ‘cross-border verification’, performed by the member state ‘authorities’ mentioned in Article 9(2). In the absence of such checks, the certificates would be useless, and the ‘universal framework’ would not exist,” McCollum writes.

He also points out that under the Schengen Area Borders Code, the temporary reintroduction of internal borders is permitted under some specific circumstances, but not during a public health emergency, inferring that the law makes the certificates automatically illegal.

StudyinPoland.Info had warned on the possibility that the EU could use such a tool to restore travel within the block amid the Coronavirus pandemic back in April 2020, after an EU official had confirmed the information. The same had pointed out that third country citizens would be obliged to present COVID-19 vaccination proof in order to apply for a visa to the EU and Schengen Area countries once such a document was introduced.

Experts & Officials Express Their Concerns on Discrimination Against Unvaccinated People

McCollum also notes that the fact that through these certificates, European travellers who are vaccinated would be separated from those non-vaccinated, those infected from the non-infected, and those immune from non-immune, thus guaranteeing discrimination within the block.

Commenting on the same issue, Melinda Mills, director of the Leverhulme Center for Demographic Science at the University of Oxford, said for DW that says that before such certificates are introduced, a large amount of the population needs to be vaccinated, and a larger group of individuals would need to have access to vaccines.

“For Europe, the current plans seem to be that around 70 per cent [of the EU population] are to be vaccinated by the end of the summer,” she says.

However, as of the end of April, only six per cent of the EU population have been vaccinated, which according to Mills, makes the certificates discriminatory as only a small group of people have had access to vaccines so far.

The President of the European Council, Charles Michel, shares the same concern, as according to him, the utmost caution should be exercised with the timing of these certificates, insisting that a large number of people must get fully vaccinated before an EU-wide vaccine passport is adopted.

Nicole Hassoun, Binghamton University professor specializing in ethics in public health, points out that such passports are discriminating in particular if they do not make exceptions for persons who, for one reason or another, cannot be vaccinated, for example, for health reasons.

“Maybe you would allow some kind of passport system, but then there have to be health exceptions. There have to be welfare exceptions for people who really have good reasons that they need to access these services (such as travel),” Hassoun told CNBC.

Other experts of the field and EU officials have also criticized the certificates, including the Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, who claims that they will “divide the population of Europe in two.”

Privacy Concerns Amongst Travellers Though EU Assures Them Their Data Will Be Protected

When the President of the European Union Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, unfolded Commission’s plans to create a travel certificate back in March this year, she assured Europeans that the document would “respect data protection, security & privacy.”

The comment section under her tweet announcing the certificates contained lots of comments raising concerns about their privacy.

On Thursday, April 28, the European Parliament made known its position on the certificates, giving them the green light, while at the same time emphasizing that the certificates will be verified to prevent fraud and forgery, as will the authenticity of the electronic seals included in the document.

“Personal data obtained from the certificates cannot be stored in destination member states, and there will be no central database established at EU level. The list of entities that will process and receive data will be public so that citizens can exercise their data protection rights under the General Data Protection Regulation,” the Parliament explained.

At the same time, it also warned the Commission that it must take care the certificates do not become a ‘de facto’ precondition for travelling.

The same concern had also been raised by the Council of the European Union as well as the Parliament’s Civil Liberties Committee during a meeting in mid-April.