EU Plan for Covid Summer Travel Pass seen as Tall Order

Photographer: Marlene Awaad / Bloomberg

The European Union is working hard to try to introduce so-called Covid-19 passports by June to get people traveling again, according to the owner of France’s busiest airport .

The slow progress and disorganized health spread already being developed by airlines and other companies suggests that the block target is “very, very ambitious,” said Franck Le Gall, head of operations at Groupe ADP, which runs dozens of hubs including Paris-Charles de Gaulle, said in an interview.

EU action branch this week on the way to the introduction of a Digital Green Certificate confirming that conservatives have received the vaccine, recovered from the coronavirus or a recent negative test. Passports should be made easier inside and outside the bloc, finding a balance between tourism-dependent states seeking to reopen their borders and countries such as France and Germany that have taken a more cautious stance. take.

Read more: EU vaccine permits for travel are months away, memo displays

The move comes as well as a number of systems based on an already planned mobile application, including the International Air Transport Association travel passport, the AOKpass from the travel security company SOS International, Daon’s VeriFly and CommonPass with support from the World Economic Forum.

A meeting of European airports this week decided that “an examination of options to make room for ground testing must be completed,” Le Gall said. Trials are underway in a few major cities including Paris, London and Rome.

It is essential that the passes provide strict data protection, are easily adaptable to comply with changing rules, and allow scans to be completed in just a few seconds with the same equipment used to pass a passport. to study, Le Gall said.

“We are agnostic on the various routes but our criteria are interactive so our staff do not have to use five different scanning systems,” he said.

Emmanuelle Ferracci, who is in charge of the The Air France test of the AOKpass at the CDG hub, in an interview, said the verification process must be simple and quick or customers will have to face “major obstacles at airports.”

The AOKpass was tested for the first time this week on Los Angeles and San Francisco services and flights to the Caribbean. Employees had to start opening the app on a smart device at a show Thursday to verify test results for California travelers, a system Le Gall said would not work when airports were busier.