Vainienė: There is no possibility to apply for passports in trade in EU countries

Although a similar document, the COVID-19 digital certificate or the “Green Passport”, was previously introduced in some European Union countries, the rule introduced this week to prohibit people without a passport from visiting certain food outlets is unique. , according to the economist Rūta. Vainienė., Because Lithuania is the first to apply it.

“We are like icebreakers, experimenters: in the countries of the European Union, there is no such possibility of applying passports in trade. There is only Cyprus, but it is an island, tourism, so we can’t really follow suit. As for France, only in individual counties with poor epidemiology and in supermarkets of 20,000 square meters M. meters. A supermarket appealed to the court, which ruled that the Opportunity Passport was being used illegally, arguing that it prevented people from buying at lower prices because that is precisely where higher flows and larger scale lead to lower prices. And they were allowed to operate without a passport of opportunity (…) In Lithuania, the specificity and uniqueness of the passport of opportunity also applies in grocery stores, ”commented R. Vainienė, director of the trade association, on the news .

According to the interlocutor, trade can work successfully during an epidemic and the epidemiological situation in Lithuania is not as bad as in neighboring Estonia, but strict restrictions apply here.

“I have the deep conviction that the trade can work in any epidemiological situation, it only needs to speed up the traffic. The ventilation has already been taken care of, the partitions have been taken care of, the contact is not very tight and long, so I think that flow restrictive measures could work for the entire trade. There are places where the epidemiology is worse, for example, in Estonia, and these restrictions do not apply, ”says economist R. Vainienė.

The introduction of the passport of opportunity also affects food suppliers: according to R. Vaisienė, product orders are decreasing. There is a possibility that Lithuanian shoppers, unable to access their usual stores, may migrate to other chain stores available to them. Competition in retail chains, he said, should take place in other ways, but reaching the golden mean is difficult.

We have also received from supplier associations, mainly butchers and poultry farmers, who said that ‘traders are reducing orders’. Because traffic is visibly predicted to be redistributed in some way between stores on the same network, but shoppers may also migrate to another network, and local products are not necessarily traded there, there is a higher share of imports. . (…) We recognize that companies have to compete with each other, but on things that are completely different from the squares of the legislation, which are better for some and worse for others. It is difficult to find the ideal solution: both during the first quarantine and during the second, when some practically worked only to limit the flow, and others did not work at all ”, recalls R. Vaisienė.

The application of the opportunity passport in supermarkets has already been introduced, and its effectiveness will be revealed in time: according to the head of the trade association, no serious challenge was experienced in the first days, everything is going well, but the general portrait will be revealed only at the end of the week. However, he is pleased that a new profession has been created and that additional jobs have been created for the population.

“We will have a complete picture only after a week, when the whole cycle has changed. Now the first impressions are happening: employees are only tempted where to look if it is not an Opportunity Passport but another document (…) They have hired people specifically selected for this role: a new profession has even emerged: Opportunity Passport Examiners. This is not a security guard: such employees must have received training, have some kind of license. Opportunity passport examiners, if they are only involved in verification, they are members of a new profession: they need to know the languages, because the document that a person will present can also be written in hieroglyphs. You need to have a good understanding of mathematics, because you need to count the number of weeks that have happened since the second vaccination of that document and to know if the options are already active “. – says the economist.

As of this Monday, most institutions can only open their doors to customers who have presented a valid Opportunity Passport or equivalent document: exemptions apply to visitors to gas stations, museums and libraries, and residents can buy food basic in small stores of up to 1,500 square meters. meters. meters.