The E.U. Launches A Standardized Passenger Locator Form

The European Union has approved the Passenger Locator Form (PLF) a common form to be adopted by all countries in the E.U. The form is intended to simplify and standardize the Governments’ efforts to collect personal information from travellers in order for them to be easily contactable in case they have been exposed to an infectious disease (like COVID-19) during their travel by airplane, ship, rail, bus or automobile.

This process has been put in place my health authorities in many countries to establish a tracing procedure that is intended to stop the spread of COVID-19, but in most cases the task was being performed through a plethora of paper forms that were difficult to collect and manage, and since they were not standardized it was difficult for Government to share information collected this way among them.

The European Union has therefore developed a web application for the EU digital Passenger Locator Form (dPLF) that “allows for easier and more rapid data collection and exchange […] making contact tracing more effective and efficient”, says the newly-created website euplf.eu.

Travellers will be asked to register on the site, and they will be able to use the same login and password every time they need to fill in a form. Before their trip they will have to fill in the form in compliance with the requirements of their destination country and the application will provide them with a pdf document containing a QR code. This code will be scanned by the local controllers at the point of entry and this will allow them to retrieve the information they require.

Families will be able to fill in only one form which will contain personal information about the travellers, travel information, contact details, temporary and permanent address and travel history.