Sunday, January 03, 2021
Lashes against pressure for vaccination
Röttgen calls for more rights for vaccinated people
When choosing their new chairman, CDU members are also spoiled for choice as to whether they want to grant vaccinated people more freedom: while the presidential candidates Röttgen and Merz are in favor, the North Rhine-Westphalian Prime Minister Laschet fears that vaccination will be mandatory through the back door.
CDU chairman Norbert Röttgen is in favor of giving people who have been vaccinated in the pandemic more rights again. "The restriction of freedom is only justified as long as there is a risk," he told the newspapers of the Funke media group. "If the risk is no longer there due to vaccination, the restriction must be lifted in principle and constitutionally." Röttgen emphasized: "The restriction of freedom is not the normal state – and the restoration of fundamental rights is not a privilege. It is exactly the other way around: the restriction of freedom is a state of emergency."
Similar to Röttgen, the third CDU chairman Friedrich Merz had argued in December. Fundamental rights are individual, not collective rights. "If someone is vaccinated, the reason to restrict basic rights is much more difficult," said Merz. "It's not that easy to say: We'll wait until we have so-called herd immunity among the entire population." Restrictions on fundamental rights do not have to be justified collectively, but individually.
"There must be no pressure"
The North Rhine-Westphalian Prime Minister Armin Laschet, who is also running for the CDU chairmanship, expressed a completely different opinion at the weekend. Laschet said in an interview with the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung" that he does not want any privileges for those who have been vaccinated in the corona pandemic. This also applies to people who want to visit lonely relatives in hospitals or old people's homes. Here, too, it is clear: "There must be no pressure to vaccinate. That is the overriding sentence."
The loneliness in homes and hospitals is a "very serious question". But "no pressure should be put on people to get vaccinated," Laschet was quoted as saying by the newspaper. He was "against compulsory vaccination" and therefore also "against measures that give the impression that the state is enforcing vaccination". There are "other ways of gaining access than vaccination," for example more rapid tests and sufficient FFP2 masks. "And if at some point it really isn't enough, we have to rethink".
In an interview with the Funke newspapers, Röttgen also rejected criticism of the slow start of the corona vaccinations in Germany. "I think it's right that German politicians have clearly rejected vaccination nationalism," he told the Funke newspapers. "The vaccinations have now started and I am convinced that the production capacities will be expanded and new vaccines will be added. I assume that we will achieve a high vaccination level of 60 percent or more in Germany in the summer."
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