EU must consider mandatory COVID vaccination, says Ursula von der Leyen

The European Union must consider mandatory vaccination to tackle the spread of the “highly contagious” omicron variant, Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission’s president, has said. …

In a rallying cry, Mrs von der Leyen urged the EU’s 27 member states to step up their vaccination campaigns, roll out booster doses and consider new travel restrictions in response to the emergence of the mutant strain in Europe.

Mrs von der Leyen, a former medical doctor, said mandatory immunisations must be considered as a policy to counter worryingly low take-up across the bloc, which has some 150 million people not vaccinated against the disease.

Asked whether she supported mandatory jabs, she told reporters on Wednesday: “We have the vaccines, the life-saving vaccines, but they are not being used adequately everywhere. And this costs … This is an enormous health cost coming along.

“If you look at the numbers, we have now 77 per cent of the adults in the European Union vaccinated or if you take the whole population, it’s 66 per cent. And this means one-third of the European population is not vaccinated. These are 150 million people.

“This is a lot, and not each and every one can be vaccinated – children, for example, or people with special medical conditions – but the vast majority could and therefore, I think it is understandable and appropriate to lead this discussion now.

“How we can encourage and potentially think about mandatory vaccination within the European Union, this needs discussion. This needs a common approach, but it is a discussion that I think has to be met.”
 

The Western world has established and prided itself on love of individual freedom and limited governmental control.

That time could be ending. In America and Britain, and around the world, governments are planning unprecedented surveillance and control on the pretext of combating covid-19.

This new surveillance society will require no rustling of papers. Governments are working on the most convenient system of identification and surveillance ever using smartphones and online tools. But the result is the same. New vaccine passports could soon mean the government can track your every move. …

The European Union is also marching toward vaccine passports. Its efforts involve more than national tracking; with free travel across many European borders, it needs a supranational system. This means a new level of centralization, with data gathered on ordinary citizens across a couple dozen countries to be united in a single centralized system. Never has the EU exerted such control over the lives of Europeans.