In response to a proposal of the European Commission, the European Parliament voted this past week to renew the EU Digital Covid Certificate for another year. The vote was 453 for and 119 against, with 19 abstentions.
The European Commission reached agreement on the extension of the EU Digital COVID Certificate by one year, which will allow persons to continue using their certificate to travel across the EU past the regulation’s initial expiry date of June 30. The certificate regulation was originally adopted in June of last year, ostensibly to facilitate “safe travel” between EU member states. The European Commission claims the certificate did just that for citizens across the European Union when member states restricted travel on the grounds of public health. So far, EU member states have issued over 1.8 billion certificates.
Seeking comments prior to the agreement, the European Commission launched a survey under the heading “Have Your Say” that was open to the public from February 3 to April 8, 2022. The survey elicited over 385,000 responses, almost all of which appear to be opposed to the Digital COVID Certificate renewal.
Here are a few of these comments:
- EU Covid passports are bad law and should be discontinued. They are contrary to the Nuremberg Code. They are contrary to Universal declaration of bioethics on human rights 2005.
- It’s useless, discriminating and not based on any scientific/medical evidence. Even if we were still in a medical emergency (which is up for debate), and even if the covid certificate was useful to block the contagion (which clearly fails to do) the use of a QR code to grant citizens basic freedoms like accessing public and private places, meeting people, moving and traveling freely is intolerable and unacceptable.
- Please immediately stop this initiative which is unprecedented in promoting discrimination and segregation in the EU’s Member States, and has no solid scientific basis. It was the worst idea of the Union in a very long time, and its extension will only confirm the suspicion that the real intention is to not to fight any sanitary crisis but to create a QR code society of social credits, based on the Chinese model.
The renewal of the Digital COVID Certificate does not mean that it will be immediately applied, but that the infrastructure will remain in place and can be applied if and when member states see fit to do so. The current rules for holding a valid EU Digital COVID Certificate not only discriminate against the unvaccinated, but also against natural immunity, which is treated as more ephemeral than vaccine-induced immunity.
Once again, we see the tyranny of government, in this case the EU Parliament choosing force over freedom with the renewal of the certificate. We can only hope that the people affected will continue to voice their opposition to their government’s unnecessary use of force and bring about freedom and liberty for all.
