The government is not guilty of discrimination by applying the corona admission ticket. That is the judgment of the preliminary relief judge of the court in The Hague, writes lawyer Bart Maes, who conducted summary proceedings against the Dutch state. His demand to suspend the introduction of the corona access pass until proceedings on the merits have been rejected, Maes said on Twitter.
Maes finds the checks on the QR codes ‘illegal, punishable and discriminatory’. According to him, the measure is in violation of the constitution and international treaties. “A lot of people who have not been vaccinated feel, just like us, enormously discriminated against and are dismissed as second-class citizens,” Maes opened his plea last week.
“We are at the tail end of the corona crisis, the crisis is actually already over. After a year and a half of corona measures, most of which have contributed little or nothing positive to solving the pandemic, the caretaker cabinet has given birth to the last monster: the corona pass, which has already been renamed the apartheid pass.
Different world
“In the corona pandemic, the government has to make trade-offs that are not easy,” the country’s lawyer argued last week. “One can disagree with this assessment.” She emphasized that the corona ticket allows a number of sectors to reopen and that a green check mark in the app cancels another restriction on fundamental rights, namely keeping a distance of 1.5 meters.
Maes hardly discussed the arguments of the government anymore. “We live in a completely different world,” he concluded.
Farewell 1,5 meters
The government introduced the corona ticket to say goodbye to the mandatory 1,5 meters away. Because keeping distance is difficult in many places, the government has chosen to work in food and beverage outlets, cinemas, theaters and concert halls and at events with a corona ticket to prevent the spread of the corona virus.
With the QR code, anyone aged 13 and over can demonstrate that they have been fully vaccinated, recovered from Covid-19 or tested negative for the coronavirus up to 24 hours ago.
Malieveld
Lawyer Maes believes that the government has been ‘crossing red lines’ for some time. “For example, in the violence that was used in corona demonstrations on Malieveld earlier this year. A line was also crossed when it was decided to vaccinate 12 to 18-year-olds. But what is happening now, the corona pass, I find really appalling. It leads to segregation and that is the worst thing there is.”
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