At the beginning of this year, the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was the first EU head of government to campaign for a digital vaccination certificate to enable tourist travel in the Schengen area again.

The idea caught on and is celebrated as a great success in Brussels.

But how long?

Scientific studies show that the antibodies in vaccinated people decrease, and the increasing numbers of infections in countries with high vaccination rates like the Netherlands seem to prove this.

This is why a new European debate is now starting: How long can the vaccination certificate remain valid at all?

Do you need a refresher?

Thomas Gutschker

Political correspondent for the European Union, NATO and the Benelux countries based in Brussels.

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Again, it's Mitsotakis who got the ball rolling in a televised address he gave last week.

He will contact Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and suggest that the vaccination certificate only remain valid if it is refreshed six months after the last full vaccination.

"In this way we will avoid a crack in the wall of immunity that we have already built on our continent," said the conservative politician.

Caught on the wrong foot

At first he got the Commission on the wrong foot. Speakers pressured around for days that a proposal would be made “in good time”. It is now clear that it should take place this week, on Thursday. "We have to avoid fragmentation, and this depends on strong voting," said Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides in the European Parliament on Monday evening. She announced an "update" of the previous Council recommendation for free travel in the EU and for travel to third countries in order to do justice to the "important role" of the digital Corona certificate.

A fragmentation occurs because individual states have already issued regulations on so-called boosters without coordinating. In France, for example, people over 65 years of age have to have a booster vaccination so that their evidence remains valid and they can use it to visit a restaurant or get on the train - no later than six months after the last full vaccination.

The vaccination campaign for those over fifty is due to begin in December. In Belgium, too, older people are already receiving a third vaccination, but the national Corona app has to be reprogrammed. So far it is up to each individual whether to upload the (usually) third vaccination into their app. Whoever does this will not be activated, but will be blocked for 14 days - that is how long it took for the second vaccination to take effect. This is anything but an incentive.

So common rules are needed. A scientific recommendation from the European Infection Protection Authority (ECDC) is expected this Wednesday, which will explain when the protection starts to wane. A Swedish study recently showed that the protective effect of all approved vaccines decreases in the first six months, although this is the least the case with the Moderna vaccine, more so with BioNTech and particularly strong with AstraZeneca. However, people who received a booster with one of the two mRNA vaccines were significantly better protected.

The EU ministers of the member states exchanged views on the subject for the first time on Tuesday. Michael Roth, Minister of State for Europe in the Foreign Office, said: "Boosting is the order of the day." You have to "make significant adjustments" to the vaccination certificate so that it "does justice to the scientific findings". The SPD politician has not yet been able to speak for the future federal government, but his colleagues will have understood the signal. The representatives of Ireland, Finland and Luxembourg also spoke out in favor of an adjustment.

The Luxembourg minister, Jean Asselborn, put this most effectively.

It is owed to the citizens to quickly find a "uniform regulation", he said.

This also includes determining how long those who have recovered have adequate protection - and thus a valid certificate.

So far, this period has been limited to six months.