Today, the European Parliament will vote on the introduction of vaccine passports within the EU, known as Digital Green Certificates. Ciarán McCollum, a barrister and linguist from Northern Ireland who advises on matters of European law, has written a piece for Lockdown Sceptics expressing his concern that this scheme will destroy the fragile peace in Northern Ireland. Here’s an extract:
The proposed regulation will cost Europe dearly. There are the financial implications of a universal border control regime which involves the constant handling of that most sensitive of data types: medical records. There is the loss of ideals intrinsic to European democracy. But more pertinently for me, there is the situation in Northern Ireland.
The Explanatory Memorandum calls freedom of movement one of the EU’s “most cherished achievements” and a “driver of its economy”. It is also a driver of peace in my home. The Northern Irish remain citizens of Europe without the Union, and will not accept being checked upon entry into what about a million of them consider their home: the neighbouring Member State of Ireland. The prospect of violence is terrible.
Despite these risks and contrary to the recently introduced Better Regulation Rules, the DGC controls are being rushed through with nary a cost-benefit analysis, impact assessment or public consultation and with limited parliamentary debate. Why? Well, in the words of the Head of the Commision’s Covid Taskforce, Thierry Breton, when speaking to RTL in March, so that Europeans can once again “enter a public place” and “live without being a risk to each other”. Could Mr Breton really mean to suggest that there ever was, or ever can be, life without risk? Has the Parisian gentleman, when crossing his home city by car for example, ever encountered the 4-lane 12-exit roundabout at the Arc de Triomphe?
Worth reading in full.
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Having read this article I feel a letter to my MP coming on. Not that I expect it to do me much good. I have read about the EU plan for DGC but never thought that it would apply to me. Now I find that because I reside in NI, irrespective of whether the vaccine passports come to fruition in the UK, as yet another legacy of the UK’s calamitous Irish Sea Border agreement with the EU, I will find myself subject to the DGC system without any democratic mechanism in which to voice an objection. I have never felt more “hemmed in” in my lifetime than I do now. If I wanted to cross the border to visit friends and family I would have to participate in the DGC system whether I want to or not. There is no other way to look at it, but the UK has let NI down and left us exposed in ways that are more than simply economic with the deal they signed with the EU to leave.
Those who have made the border the hill to die on, claiming high ideals such as freedom and Irish citizenship will not see the irony of such a scheme. I’ve seen those same people masked up and fearful shopping for apples. They’ve no backbone or foresight for what is coming. Compliance here is very high indeed, not a note of scepticism of what is being played out. In fact, I’d say they’ll openly welcome it.
Good luck getting any response from your NI MP. I have written many emails since last summer and not a single response.
Yes – compliance here is VERY high and I cannot for the life of me work out why people cannot see what is going on, and we could indeed find that far from failing to see the irony of the hard border via the DGC there will be those who will positively welcome the thing.
Wasn’t the imposition of a de facto border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain an inevitable consequence of any meaningful Brexit (ie one that involved leaving either the Single Market or the Customs Union or both), given that there is negligible support in the Republic of Ireland for leaving the EU, and that the RoI, the EU and the USA were all implacably opposed to a hard border on the island of Ireland?
Well – seeing that pointless Brexit already has put the boot in, what’s new in the stupidity stakes?
Of course – it’s all the EU! Silly me.
Well, you said it!
Haha – loved that reference to ‘European Democracy’! Belly laugh stuff!!!
I suspect that the decision by the Biden admin on 31 March has really put the cat amongst in pigeons. Doubt anyone saw that coming. If the US is not going to insist of ‘vax passports’ and is currently running with quickie antigen tests as OK for border control, it isn’t going to take long before other more draconian regimes , like the UK’s, fall over.
I quite like Spain’s gambit, you don’t let Spanish in the UK, Brits don’t get in Spain. Cracks appearing in the edifice.
By the way this article is good but needs updating , a lot has happened in the last month.
While I see the value of vaccine passports as a temporary measure to allow for some large gatherings domestically before herd immunity is achieved, I don’t see the point for international travel (except perhaps as an alternative to a test):
Thank you for your comment.
I would like to know what I’ve missed in the article.
Could you please send it by email to Lockdown Sceptics for my attention?
I’d like evidence of Ciaran McCollum’s assertion that about a million of the people of Northern Ireland call the Republic of Ireland “home”. Or does he mean the EU. Just because the overal Referedum numbers were 55% to 45% in favour of remaining, does not mean that they call the EU home. And there is certainly not a majority in NI that favour leaving the UK for the RoI, which is what “a million” would consititute.