One positive of being outside of a large organisation is being able to tailor things to your own needs, so would a UK international vaccine pass also be able to double up as a domestic one if we went down this route? I’ve seen that the Danes have made their own domestic pass app, so presumably this means two different apps for them in the future, or will they be able to integrate them?
I don't really follow your argument. How is it a positive of being outside of a large organisation that you can do whatever fits your needs, when in the next sentence you're saying that the Danes are doing exactly that while being part of that large organisation? And there's also a misunderstanding about how the EU works. The EU has very little influence on member states in terms of what they're doing in health care. That's fully in the hands of each individual member state. Therefore, the vaccine passport is basically just the EU providing the infrastructure, i.e. an app or another form of verfying whether someone has been vaccinated, tested or has recovered from covid in the last six months (like a QR code on a piece of paper) that can be used in every member state. Furthermore, they give recommendations in terms of what rules should be applied and what vaccines should be accepted (it will probably be all the EMA-approved ones).
However, each and every member state then makes their own decisions what they will be allowing the people to do when they've been vaccinated, tested or have had covid recently. They will also decide themselves whether they'll accept certain vaccines that have not been approved by EMA. We have quite a few tourists from China here in Austria and our EU-minister already said that we will probably also accept the Chinese vaccine even though it hasn't been approved by EMA. In addition to that, the data is not stored somewhere in Brussels, but in each individual member state. So you need to have the infrastructre anyway. It's just a question of then linking that with Brussels. My understanding of the vaccine passport is that no data will be stored by the EU, so their platform basically just acts as communication hub for the individual member states. So, if a request from Greece is made, because some guy at the border or whatever scans the QR code in the vaccine passport app of a guy trying to come in from Germany, it goes to Brussels and from there a request goes to Germany asking whether the guy at the border has actually been vaccinated, tested or has had covid recently. And the only thing going to Brussels then is either a "Yes" or "No". And from what I know this is mainly due to the fact again, that the EU has basically no responsibilities in health care.
The whole sovereignty argument doesn't really work in most Corona-related issues, because again the EU's powers in terms of health care are very restricted and basically fully in the hands of the individual member states. So, I think it's kind of bizarre when it is brought up as a "positive" of Brexit. Everything the UK has done with vaccinations could have been done as a member state. The UK could have emergency approval for the vaccines or whatever it's called, the UK could have made separate deals with vaccine suppliers and they could even have used non-EMA-approved vaccines like Hungary did. There might have been a backlash from other EU countries, but those never stopped the UK from asking for all sorts of special deals or rebates from Brussels or from outright blocking certain decisions.
