The French High Court ruled on the law establishing this new certificate by validating its main provisions. It will be used from Monday to access places of leisure and catering. Political rallies are exempt.
The last light turns green. The Constitutional Council delivered its decision on Friday on the bill transforming the health pass into a vaccination pass by validating most of its provisions. Including possible identity checks by cafetiers or restaurateurs, on behalf of the objective of “health protection” facing the Covid-19 epidemic.
This decision therefore opens the way for the entry into force of the vaccine pass from Monday January 24, as announced by Jean Castex in his speech on Thursday evening. Intended for people at least 16 years old, this new certificate will be used to access leisure activities, restaurants and drinking establishments, trade fairs, seminars and exhibitions and interregional public transport.
The sages of the rue de Montpensier, however, censored the possibility for the organizers of political meetings to ask participants for a health pass. In the midst of the presidential campaign, the organizers may however take “all useful health precautionary measures, such as limiting the number of participants, distributing masks or ventilating the rooms”, according to a press release.
The Constitutional Council had been seized by 60 deputies from all sides led by the group La France insoumise of the Palais Bourbon, and by around sixty socialist senators. The scopes of the two referrals were however different, the first being opposed to the vaccination pass, the second considering that a “a number of safeguards” must be brought to “supervise it scrupulously”.
Denouncing a further step in a “liberal, anti-social and anti-democratic logic”, the CGT had also sent an anti-vaccination pass argument to the Constitutional Council. “The strategy remains the same as for the health pass: to make people feel guilty, stigmatize and punish individuals, as evidenced by the recent contemptuous remarks by Emmanuel Macron for all fellow citizens”, had criticized the plant.
The bill strengthening the tools for managing the health crisis and modifying the Public Health Code was adopted on Sunday by Parliament after two weeks of heated debate.
Update : at 3:17 p.m., with the addition of the exemption for political rallies.