The Green Pass

The Green Pass means the end of the Schengen Agreement. A commentary by Rainhard Kloucek

The Green Pass is the clever entry into a social credit system modelled on the Chinese example. This is a prediction coupled with the fervent wish that it may be completely wrong. But whoever does not want to wake up in a ‘feel-good dictatorship’ must be vigilant.

But not only that. The Green Pass is also a dishonest vaccination mandate and the end of the Schengen Agreement. Anyone who does not have the Green Pass because they are not vaccinated will be excluded from fundamental rights such as travel or attending cultural events. It would have been honest to discuss a vaccination mandate. In this specific case, there are good arguments for it, just as there were for smallpox vaccination. And this vaccination mandate was also linked to clear regulations for liability in the event of vaccination damage. Why, then, does politics want to shirk this responsibility?

Ultimately, the Green Pass means the end of freedom of movement, as the Schengen Agreement was supposed to guarantee it. Freedom of movement throughout the entire Schengen area. An end to small nation-states, at least concerning freedom of movement. For nationalists, this freedom has long been an abomination. They want to restrict and control the movement of citizens. They have never come to terms with the overcoming of the nation-state. The paternalistic approach, where the totalitarian state decides on civil liberties – fundamental freedoms connected with our human dignity – is thus Europeanised. For the state also decides on the allocation of vaccinations.

How perverse this approach is shown by the geographical comparison. A person from Feldkirch may travel to Vienna without a Green Pass, but not to Paris, which is closer. A Viennese may travel to Vorarlberg without a Green Pass, but not to the Slovak capital, which was once reachable by tram, let alone to Chernivtsi, which is geographically about as close as Bregenz. Politics within the intellectual confines of the sandbox or Ballhausplatz.

The EU Commission, the guardian of the treaties, which should also enforce Schengen freedom, degrades itself by drafting the provisions on this Green Pass into an enforcer of nationalism, which was believed to have been overcome. A political regression of 100 years.

© Featured image: European Union 2021