A claim made by a senior EU official that the bloc never pushed people into getting jabbed against COVID has been met with disbelief from critics.
A senior EU official stunned onlookers on Tuesday after she claimed that the bloc had never pushed its citizens into getting jabbed against COVID-19 in order to allow them to access public services, and that claims to the contrary have mainly been spread by what she described as “anti-vaccine activists”.
It comes as the bloc prepares to renew its transnational system of COVID-19 passports that demonstrate whether or not a holder is vaccinated and/or boostered against the disease, which one MEP told Breitbart Europe is a tool that enables EU member states to lock down their own people.
Despite the planned renewal of the EU’s COVID passes, as well as the bloc’s past public interest in implementing a union-wide regime of mandatory vaccination, Věra Jourová — the EU’s commissioner for “Values and Transparency” — claimed during a sitting of the bloc’s Special Committee on COVID-19 pandemic that the organisation had never even considered pushing people into getting vaccinated.
“We were never pushing the people to get the vaccine as a condition for access to public services or health services,” the commissioner told the committee, while also claiming that the EU had never so much as “considered or even set in stone in some law or… obligation to get vaccined (sic).”
By contrast, Jourová said that claims to the contrary that “if you are not vaccined you will not get… to the public spaces or [get] access to the services (sic)” were mainly being peddled by what she described as “anti-vaccine activists”.
While Jourová seems somehow confident of her claim, it was met with disbelief by others, with elected representative Cristian Terhes MEP in particular asking whether the commissioner was actually being “serious” with the statement she made.
“Madame Commissioner I have to tell you — and please look at me — Madame Commissioner, are you serious with what you just said right now?” the Romanian politician asked.
“…we are talking about the fundamental rights of every EU citizen, and we just heard right now that through this green certificate people were not forced to be vaccinated,” he continued”Are we guys serious? Can we look people in the eyes, citizens of the European Union telling them that?”
Terhes went on to say that, during periods of lockdown, he had to regularly “fight” with EU security to even get access to the European parliament without a COVID pass, a claim that appears to directly contradict the spirit of the commissioner’s statements.
Speaking to Breitbart Europe, Terhes once again challenged the claim made by the commissioner that the EU had not pushed for people to get vaccinated via the restriction of public services, and that any individuals who suffered side effects as a result of COVID-19 jabs should be compensated by the bloc.
“The European Commission, with the Digital Covid Certificate, provided the essential tool for national governments to build a digital tyranny in which to throw the fundamental rights of all citizens,” the MEP said.
“Without the Digital Covid Certificate, outrages to a free society such as the lockdown, the inability to travel or enter the workplace would not have happened,” he continued. “The European Commission must take full responsibility, issue a full apology to all EU citizens and, as way of compensation, take financial responsibility for the many people who have suffered side effects after they were coerced to be vaccinated”.