López Aguilar believes that vaccination against Covid-19 could be mandatory in Spain

The former Minister of Justice of the PSOE, MEP and president of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs of the European Parliament affirms "no" there is "no constitutional clause" that prevents it

December 27 2021 (10:33 WET)
Juan Fernando López Aguilar
Juan Fernando López Aguilar

The former Minister of Justice of the PSOE, MEP and president of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs of the European Parliament, Juan Fernando López Aguilar, believes that vaccination against Covid-19 could be mandatory in Spain given that "no" there is "no constitutional clause" that prevents it.

In fact, the socialist was in favor due to the "emergency situation" that the coronavirus pandemic has generated. It is, he defended, an "extraordinary" situation and like "we had probably never known". "I do not believe that in Spain there is any constitutional clause that prevents thinking about mandatory vaccination," he maintained.

However, he acknowledged in an interview with Europa Press that if someone had asked him the question theoretically before what happened, his answer would have been no.

"If someone had asked me if it was possible to impose a mandatory vaccination on the entire citizenry against an then unpredictable evil, the theoretical answer in the abstract would have been no," he admitted.

But, he defended, "in view of the accumulated experience, more and more member states are finding constitutional accommodation to the need to activate mandatory vaccination measures."

First of all, "to all public officials" and second to "those workers who cannot telework and therefore have to appear in the premises where they perform their work."

López Aguilar defended that the vaccination of those people who work facing the public is a "way of ensuring public health and the right to life that public authorities have a duty to preserve."

And the socialist indicated that this virus --which is doing so much damage globally-- is taking a lower cost of lives than the initial one thanks to vaccines. "Infections may resist comparison, but mortality no longer resists it and the only answer is vaccination," he argued.

"Therefore, if vaccination proves effective in preventing deaths and also in avoiding the saturation of ICUs and hospital plants in the member states, this is a measure that can find accommodation in the constitutions," he argued.

"Difficult balance between privacy and public health"

The debate between privacy, freedom and public health "is open," acknowledges the expert in constitutional law: "It is taking place throughout Europe and there is a great dialectical tension accumulated trying to account for the very difficult balance between the preservation of life and public health with privacy."

This is the debate caused by the so-called Covid passport, first to travel, which is now being used by some regional and local administrations as a way to limit entry to services and try to control infections.

"Undoubtedly, the rights of privacy of health-related data and the confidentiality of medical data are prevalent. Many people protest and say, why do I have to be constantly showing this data?", he acknowledged.

But in his opinion, "the truth is that most of the member states have in their constitutional orders some clause that justifies it, that preserves the right to life, the right to public health and the obligation of public authorities to preserve the right to life and public health and that require certain sacrifices of the data that we estimate until this moment that were non-transferable and effectively oblige us." "It is a difficult balance, but necessity has imposed it," he argued.

Other administrations do not retain information about vaccination

In any case, he wanted to explain in detail the operation of the certificate, which "is issued by the health administration" but that when it is checked "it is not retained" by any other administration. "If one travels to Belgium, as I do continuously, Belgian health or the Belgian administration does not retain your data. It simply recognizes the validity of the Spanish certificate. It respects data protection," he detailed.

López Aguilar also considered it "good to clarify that the third-party uses" that are now being seen of the Covid passport "do not come from European law, but from national or regional laws that have extended the validation." "The certificate to go to a theater, restaurant or gym is not in European law; it is in the regional laws that are requiring that same certificate for uses other than the one with which it was conceived," he said.

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