European Union told to back vaccine passports or Google may do it anyway

European Union leaders inched toward establishing bloc-wide vaccine certificates to enable countries to reopen to travel as Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned that unless they hurry Apple and Google will step into the vacuum.

During a five-hour video call, the EU’s 27 leaders focused on how to haul their nations back to a form of normalcy after a pandemic that’s claimed more than 500,000 lives and shut down large parts of their economies. While there was broad support for certificates of some sort, leaders didn’t agree on the type of privileges they would grant.

”We have all agreed that we need vaccine certificates,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters after the talks on Thursday. “In the future, it will certainly be good to have such a certificate but that will not mean that only those who have such a passport will be able to travel; about that, no political decisions have been made yet.”

Europe’s leaders have been anxious to find a response after facing criticism for a vaccination program that lagged behind the US and UK. There’s also the prospect of a third wave of infections leading again to stricter lockdowns.

It was the first such meeting as prime minister of Italy for Mario Draghi, the former European Central Bank president. He asked leaders to adopt a more resolute and pragmatic approach to speed up vaccinations and told them the program has to move much faster, according to an official with knowledge of the call.

Draghi also called for a tougher approach against companies that don’t respect delivery commitments, suggesting that their exports from the EU could be blocked not only during the period they don’t respect accords, but also for a certain period afterward. 
 

The growing support for a digital certificate with common criteria such as vaccination, negative testing or immunity was helped by Merkel seeming to soften her stance on the matter, backing work on such a document, according to two people familiar with her remarks. But von der Leyen urged the group to move faster because U.S. tech companies are already discussing an alternative with the World Health Organization.