Parliament is tearing itself apart over the repentance system, which aims to be an additional incentive for vaccination. Approved in the National Assembly, it was rejected in the Senate.
To further increase the level of vaccination coverage in France in the face of the spread of the coronavirus, should a system be instituted to “forgive” people who defraud the health pass, if in exchange they are vaccinated? This track was considered in the National Assembly, and voted. But the Senate decided otherwise, in the law committee.
An amendment pushed by Senator Philippe Bas, also chairman of the said commission, killed this mechanism of repentance on January 10, 2021. Adopted, it deleted the corresponding paragraphs in article 1 of the bill strengthening the management tools of the health crisis and amending the public health code. It is this text that will change the health pass into a vaccination pass.
A repentance system for past fraudsters?
The government and the presidential majority proposed to put an end to public action against those guilty of using and holding a fake pass to evade restrictions taken for public health purposes and to force the public’s hand to be vaccinated, to limit the consequences of the virus on health in the event of infection.
Clearly, fraudsters could hope to escape fines if and only if they could prove that they had received a first dose of vaccine within 30 days of the date of the offense. These people therefore had a period of one month to find a niche, benefit from the injection of one of the vaccines valid in the European Union, and present the appropriate proof.
The system is indirectly reminiscent of the tax repentance device to push people in trouble with taxes to fall into line. Les Échos said in 2019 that the unit for the regularization of assets abroad, set up after the Cahuzac affair and closed at the end of 2017, handled more than 47,000 cases in 5 years, which made it possible to recover more than 10 billion dollars. ‘euros.
The Senate rejects the idea in committee
But for Philippe Bas and his colleagues, the device imagined here is inadmissible: it is a ” deviation from criminal law ” and that ” so violates the principle of equality before the law, according to which it is not possible to treat similar situations differently – two people having committed an offense related to the health pass. “
For members of the upper house of parliament, “ it seems more in line with the principles of our law to publish a circular on penal policy in order to ask the Public Prosecutor’s Office not to prosecute or to discontinue the offenses when their discovery results from the request of a person having a false documentary evidence of vaccination to actually get vaccinated. “
We doubt that the Senate, in public session, will want to return to this incitement to vaccination. But the subject could come back to the table in the joint committee, which will be set up to erase the differences between the texts voted in the National Assembly and in the Senate. The deputies having the last word, perhaps they will finally decide to reintroduce the measure.
According to statistics provided in the TousAntiCovid application on January 9, the vaccination coverage rate in France is 77.5% for people aged 5 and over. This drop compared to previous statistics is explained precisely by the inclusion of the 5-11 age group, which has not yet been taken into account. It was around 90% just before.
