On Wednesday 11 January, the European Court of Auditors (ECA) will publish a special report on the effectiveness of the tools the EU developed to facilitate safe travel during the COVID-19 pandemic.
ABOUT THE TOPIC
Although it has limited competence in public health policy, the European Commission developed four tools to facilitate travel and to help trace COVID-19 cases in the EU Member States:
- the European Federation Gateway Service – a gateway for ensuring EU-wide interoperability between national contact-tracing applications;
- the EU digital passenger locator form – a tool replacing paper forms used to collect contact-tracing information during travel;
- the platform for exchanging passenger locator forms – a solution for national authorities in Member States to exchange contact-tracing data; and
- the EU Digital COVID Certificate – a certificate confirming vaccination against COVID-19, recovery or a negative test.
ABOUT THE AUDIT
The auditors assessed whether these tools effectively facilitated travel within the EU during the COVID-19 crisis. This audit aims to identify examples of good practice and areas for improvement in the way the EU develops IT tools to facilitate free movement during health crises.
This audit complements
ECA special report 13/2022, which assessed whether the EU took effective action to protect peoples' right of free movement during the pandemic.
FOR PRESS
ECA press office will hold a virtual briefing on Wednesday 11 January. Journalists who wish to participate should contact
press@eca.europa.eu for details.
The report and press release will be published on the ECA website
eca.europa.eu at 5:00 p.m. CET on Wednesday 11 January.
The ECA member responsible for this report is Baudilio Tomé Muguruza.
The ECA's special reports set out the results of its audits of EU policies and programmes or management topics related to specific budgetary areas. The ECA selects and designs these audit tasks to be of maximum impact by considering the risks to performance or compliance, the level of income or spending involved, forthcoming developments and political and public interest.