“As we approach the travel season, it is important to ensure that Europeans can use the app from their own country wherever they are travelling in the EU,” Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton said in a press release.

According to the EU Commission, the information will be shared in a way that prevents individuals from being identified. Geolocation data will not be used, and the Commission will set up a gateway service to efficiently pass relevant information between the apps and servers to minimize the amount of data exchanged and reduce users’ data consumption.

According to the Commission, most member states have launched contact tracing apps and the “great majority” are decentralized, meaning the contact tracing matches happen on a users’ device not in a centralized server. The decentralized approach is meant to better protect users’ identities, and it has been adopted by countries like Italy, Germany and Switzerland. The Apple-Google API is also decentralized. The UK and France have taken a centralized approach, so those apps will not be eligible for this interoperability standard.