The colleague intended to go to Belgrade. Having lived in Germany for decades, she recently took German citizenship. German law excludes dual citizenship with some exceptions. States are sometimes possessive mistresses, imbued with God's first commandment: you shall have no other gods but Me. The colleague had to return her Serbian passport, request and receive a certificate of citizenship, and thus qualify for a German passport.
That's how she became a German citizen. Germans whose ancestors have been there for generations often refer to these new German citizens as New Germans. I guess they know how to distinguish them from the Old Germans, because from the moment of acquiring citizenship, German law does not distinguish them from the natives in terms of rights and obligations.
Hoare you going to Belgrade? Well, it can't!
So, the New German colleague went to her native country to see her mother after a year and a half. The times are pandemic. It's not out of place to ask about the rules. But the colleague was vaccinated. A modern western vaccine called Moderna.
Common sense says that official world medicine trumpets: a vaccinated person should be less suspicious when crossing the border than an unvaccinated one. It's not but!
At the airport counter of the Serbian-Arab airline company, it was explained to the confused colleague that she could not board the plane without a PCR test. Only when a good German laboratory certifies her that, based on a well-executed polymerase chain reaction (PCR), there is a high probability that she is not infected with the coronavirus - she can get on the plane.
The conversation flowed the way it normally flows between a human being disgusted by bureaucratic stupidity and company employees who are obliged to put that state stupidity into action. We will leave out the part about the money-grubbing and bitterness over failed plans, financial loss, wasted energy on persuasion.
Logic is not a good advisor in interstate matters. But how can you not ask - why can the German PCR, but not the German vaccine?
Reciprocity of nonsense
The answer is in the magic word for all complex small and large states - reciprocity. One of the basic principles of international law - reciprocity - is blind to the suffering of the individual. When this virtuous principle descends into the pandemic lowlands and the human valley of tears, it sounds like a child's indignation in the sand: if you don't admit the vaccine to me, then I won't admit it to you either.
Let's look at the current rules that apply to Germans (both old and new) when they come to Serbia. If they are diplomats or work for the offices of international organizations, then the entry regime for them is quite easy - either "negative RT-PCR test for the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus", or "certificate of full vaccination" - regardless of whether the vaccination was carried out in Germany or Serbia. And it can also be a certificate of a previous illness. Only certificates issued by "the competent authority of the state with which the Republic of Serbia has concluded an agreement or de facto reciprocity on the recognition of such documents" are recognized. Germany is among those countries.
Ordinary people suffer
And what happens to the vaccinated Germans who want to go to Serbia, but do not belong to the privileged elite who come to the country on a diplomatic or other recognized mission? Their groping - it doesn't apply. A vaccinated diplomat is not a danger to Serbia's public health, but a vaccinated New German woman who wants to visit her mother is. I guess their lungs are made of the same human tissue, antibodies are formed in the same way. But for the believers of reciprocity from state bodies, it's all an illusion.
It is not decisive whether you are a danger to public health, but whose passport you possess. In this case, full vaccination certificates issued by foreign countries with which Serbia has concluded an agreement on the recognition of vaccination are valid for border guards. They include seven countries: Greece, Hungary. Romania, Slovenia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the Czech Republic. These countries are joined by those with which "there is de facto reciprocity in the recognition of vaccination certificates". That means, there is no agreement, but in practice there are no problems either. There are ten countries in this group: Croatia, Slovakia, Georgia, Morocco, Cyprus, Lebanon, Moldova, San Marino, Tunisia, Armenia.
It is noticeable that seven of these 17 countries are members of the European Union, but the absence of classical Western countries, including Germany, is more than obvious.
In Sputnik's orbit
Why is it like that? So "reciprocity". Neither the EU nor Germany (for now, nor the United Nations Health Organization) accept Sputnik V, until the Russians provide the missing evidence of the vaccine's validity. Another question, now, is whether geopolitics, and perhaps interest, got involved in the Sputnik approval process. Serbia, which vaccinated the population with Sputnik, which, according to the authorities, is happy to produce it, is faced with the refusal of the most powerful Western countries to recognize the Russian vaccine.
Since proud Belgrade is not inclined to a nuanced approach, it was decided not to recognize vaccines outright, if they are combined with the wrong citizenship of those countries and the wrong place of vaccination.
Vaccination games without limits
If you were vaccinated in Germany, say with the Pfizer vaccine, and you have a German passport, that does not apply to you. If you were vaccinated in Serbia with the same vaccine, then it is valid - only if you have a regulated stay in Serbia. But if you have a Serbian passport, you live in Germany, you were vaccinated there with the Pfizer vaccine - then your vaccine is valid.
According to this Kafkaesque logic, the vaccine recognizes a Serbian and a German citizen - it protects the former and harms the latter.
I asked around a bit and - lo and behold, almost everyone had personal tragicomic experiences with pandemic-adjusted borders. A colleague from Belgrade who lives in Germany, and whose husband is Slovenian, told me that he also had to submit a PCR test because he was vaccinated in Germany. If he had been vaccinated in Slovenia, he could have passed with a vaccination certificate. A friend from Bosnia tells me about a businessman who moves between Europe, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. He already routinely performs PCR tests before each flight - some relied on Chinese and Russian vaccines, others on Western ones. Well, they do to each other at the borders what we do to each other in Europe.
And that is some consolation. The madness of diplomatic-health ideologies is as global as the contagion.
Urologist or virologist
All this reminded me of my recent conversation with a German specialist, a respected doctor. He casually asked me how I was and what I was doing, reclining in an ergonomic chair in his Bonn office. Word by word and then we got to my vaccination with Sputnik V - he pronounces that word as "sputnik". Not to spoil the details - the doctor said that he does not trust the Russians, especially because he knows the rich, who come here and are treated by him, then return. The Russian healthcare system is not good. I say that some of the glorious Soviet science has survived. He says, that vaccine can't be good. I say I have a bunch of antibodies. He says, it is not decisive. The seventy countries in the world that use Sputnik see it differently, I say. I am a doctor after all, he says. Yes, I say, you are an excellent urologist. This is how many people in the West think. That is why Belgrade punishes them with the obligation to undergo PCR tests even though they have been vaccinated. Instead of being grateful for every New German or Old German who decides to come to Serbia in these bad times.
Measures are not reciprocal
Let me remind you - as a German citizen, I had to show a negative antigen test, not older than 48 hours, at the entrance to Germany. My wife, who was vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine in Serbia and is a Serbian citizen, passed airport control upon arrival in Germany without the slightest problem.
This means that reciprocity does not work in this case. The Germans are letting Serbian citizens into the country with a western vaccine that was injected in Serbia. But the Serbs do not allow vaccinated German citizens to enter Serbia without being tested by the PCR method - the most expensive test. In Dusseldorf, they told a colleague that the PCR test at the airport costs a paltry 250 euros. It is for those who have no choice but have money.
She still decided to take another plane from Dortmund to Timisoara. So they will continue by land. Yes, the difference in the treatment of passengers on land and in the air is another system nonsense. A crowded double-decker bus is less of a health threat than an airplane flying at 11.000 meters and carrying the same number of passengers.
Soon the airport attendants are waiting for me too. When you read this - I will know the answer to the question of whether I can fly back to Belgrade as a German-Bosnian citizen, vaccinated and living in Serbia.
Bonus video:
