LE FIGARO. - What is the exact content of the debate on the vaccination passport for travel to Europe?
Jean-Baptiste LEMOYNE.
- There is a lot of excitement about this notion of vaccination passport.
If we come back to the proposal sent on January 12 to the President of the European Commission by the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, it calls for the establishment of a standardized certificate at Community level for vaccinated people, which thus prove that they are.
But he does not suggest that this be a prerequisite for travel.
Condition the freedom to come and go, to travel to a vaccination passport raises a number of ethical questions.
Read also: Restrictions for travelers arriving in France: septaine, PCR test ... All you need to know
What position is France defending?
Making the right to travel conditional on vaccination would discriminate against unvaccinated people.
President Emmanuel Macron wished, at yesterday's European summit, that the subject be treated with great caution.
On the one hand, we lack data on the absence of contagiousness of vaccinated people.
Hence the importance of testing for health security.
On the other hand, the distribution of vaccines in the European population remains low.
Today, less than 6 million Europeans are vaccinated out of 450 million.
So the priority is vaccination and not theoretical debates.
This debate on a vaccine passport is premature.
On the other hand, what travelers, airlines and airport infrastructure will need is to restore certainty and fluidity in the traveller's journey.
To facilitate its journey, I am in favor of our working on the development of common digital tools that would make it possible, for example, to bring together on our smartphones the results of tests, various declarations and, where applicable, a vaccination certification for each traveler. in dematerialized form.
Countries like Portugal are on this line.
In general, the best is to work at European level to define and apply common rules that are readable by all players, for example airports.
At the start of the health crisis, the emergency prevailed and governments took quick decisions with serious consequences within 24 or 48 hours.
We are now meeting between European tourism ministers, which was not the case before the health crisis.
And coordination work can be put in place.
This was the case last June to harmonize the opening dates of the borders for the summer season.
To date, travel authorizations and visa applications are already conditional on vaccines, for example the “yellow” passport. What is the difference in the case of Covid?
There is an essential difference.
The vaccines you mentioned, against yellow fever for example, concern limited, localized geographical areas.
However, with the Covid-19, a global pandemic, it is the ability to travel around the world that would be in question.
The best way to get the French to go on vacation as soon as possible is to roll back the virus as quickly as possible
Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne
If countries made this vaccination passport compulsory, will France apply a principle of reciprocity?
I don't want to get into sci-fi scenarios.
I bet on intelligence: we must reach common or interoperable solutions.
The top priority today is vaccination.
For the
February holidays
, what are your recommendations?
The time has come for humility in the face of this "permanent unexpected" that constitutes the virus.
It is therefore also with caution.
In a few days we will have more perspective on the effects of the national curfew at 6 p.m. and it will then be easier to project what February will look like.
I salute the large professional federations, such as the UMIH (Union of hotel trades and industries), the GNI (National group of independent hotel workers), EDV (Travel companies), which have made commitments flexibility or reimbursement if the health situation should lead to cancellations.
Beyond that, the best way to ensure that the French go on vacation as soon as possible is to roll back the virus as quickly as possible.
This will be done through barrier gestures, the scaling up of vaccination and the restrictive measures we are taking to block the Covid.
