France Votes For Vaccination As Legal Requirement To Travel And Eat Out–An Explainer

The French government today voted to turn its existing health passport into a vaccine passport, which means that people would need to be fully vaccinated to legally use transport services and access public spaces, bars and restaurants. A negative Covid-19 test result would no longer suffice to access these places.

People would need to continue to stay fully vaccinated in order to keep their passes valid–this means being full up-to-date on booster shots too, for residents as well as tourists. It is likely to become law from mid-January 2022 onwards, as reported by Bloomberg.

What is the current Health Pass?

European countries have been using a Health Pass to travel freely across borders since summer 2021–that means that anyone who is 1) fully vaccinated, 2) who has had Covid-19 or 3) who can show proof of a negative Covid-19 test result is allowed to pass across the borders freely as EU citizens.

In most EU countries, these health passes are currently being used to enter public spaces, such as cinemas and museums. Restaurants, bars and cafes are also obliged to use them in many countries too.

Tourists can enter into the EU by showing their own vaccine certificates (for instance, those provided by the CDC) but in many cases, these have to be converted into a Health Pass in the country being visited so that tourists can enter restaurants and bars.

In France, for example, pharmacies join a scheme to convert CDC vaccine certificates into the French Pass Sanitaire, allowing Americans to eat out, drink in bars and watch movies. The NHS pass used in the U.K. is also accepted in France but doesn’t need to be converted.

What is France’s new Vaccine Pass?

The French government today voted to turn the requirement for a Health Pass into a Vaccine Pass (pass vaccinal), which will have ramifications for the unvaccinated or those without the latest Covid-19 booster.

This new Vaccine Pass will no longer be valid for people who simply test negative–they will need to be fully vaccinated to eat out, drink out and crucially for travel, to take long-distance trains or bus rides.

The bill still needs to be approved in the Senate but the government hopes to bring it into law by mid January. More details on how this would work will be unveiled as and when the bill gets ratified by the Senate. It took three days to approve the bill through the French parliament by 214 votes to 93 (with 27 abstentions), as reported by France 24.

Currently, almost 90% of the French population over 12 years of age is fully vaccinated with 45.5% of the over-12s having received a booster jab. From January 15, everyone over the age of 18 must have received a booster to still be considered “fully” vaccinated.

The move comes after French President Emmanuel Macron told a journalist this week, “les non-vaccinés, j’ai très envie de les emmerder”–which can be translated as wanting to “piss off” the unvaccinated.

Some parts of Europe are increasingly moving towards making vaccines obligatory–such as Italy for the over-50s–or as in France’s case, making it more difficult to go about daily life without being vaccinated.