“Revelation on the vaccine pass planned by the European Commission for 2019, before the pandemic”. On December 24 at 7:47 p.m., a very curious statement appeared on Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Facebook account. Shared more than 38,000 times, it has made many internet users react, some of whom are crying conspiracy. But contrary to what the post of the leader of rebellious France suggests, the European Union has never planned to impose a vaccine pass even before the Covid-19 officially appears.
The publication in question is accompanied by an extract from a debate on BFMTV between Sophia Chikirou, now regional councilor for Île-de-France (LFI), and journalist Alain Duhamel around the possible implementation of a vaccine passport. In this video, dated January 2021, the former communications advisor to Jean-Luc Mélenchon recounts having “found a working document from the European Commission dating from March 2019 which has since been working on the idea of a community vaccine passport European ”. She therefore concludes that the idea of a vaccination pass “is not new” and that this project “hides things”.
Measles and not the Covid
The document evoked by Sophia Chikirou does exist. It is about a roadmap mentioning in particular a “vaccination passport for European citizens”. According to this “roadmap”, such a device should be the subject of a feasibility study between 2019 and 2021, before being proposed by the European Commission in 2022.
This idea of a “vaccination card” or “vaccination passport” actually dates from 2018. That year, the European Council adopted a recommendation aimed at establishing “a strengthening of cooperation against vaccine-preventable diseases”. At the time, several European countries were experiencing a resurgence of measles, most of the time contracted by unvaccinated people, reports AFP Factuel. This is why the European Commission wanted to propose measures to “increase vaccination coverage” and “close the inequalities and gaps in immunization” in the EU, as shown by its proposal for a recommendation.
Simplify vaccination
Not all EU member states impose the same vaccines. Those compulsory in France are for example only recommended in Spain. Immunization schedules and records also vary from country to country. This poses, according to the European Commission, “practical problems” “when citizens, in particular children, move to another Member State” (“vaccination documents in the national language only”, “problems remembering whether the vaccines have already been administered ”,“ lack of possibility of continuing a vaccine series already started in the country of origin ”, etc.).
For Brussels, the establishment of a “European vaccination card” would therefore have made it possible to facilitate the monitoring of vaccination from one country to another. The aim was that this “passport” could “be shared electronically across borders”. It was never intended to force vaccination or to control the movement of people. It therefore has no connection with the coercive tools put in place in the fight against Covid-19, such as the vaccine pass or the EU’s digital COVID certificate.
Old fake news
This false information has been circulating for several months. Before Jean-Luc Mélenchon, it was relayed by the conspiratorial documentary Hold-up, but also by the support of Eric Zemmour and former MEP Philippe de Villiers, as noted The Parisian last December.
Contacted at the end of December by France Inter, neither Jean-Luc Mélenchon, nor his team, commented on the publication of December 24 on Facebook. She was still online that Tuesday night. The European “vaccination passport” project imagined in 2018 is “still under discussion” according to Franceinfo.