A European Parliament vote for bloc-wide digital IDs is the latest step towards the “Chinafication of Europe”, an MEP has claimed.
Cristian Terhes, a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the Christian Democratic National Peasants’ Party, has described the European Union’s latest push for cross-border digital IDs as another move towards the “Chinafication” of the bloc.
Although bureaucrats in Brussels have insisted that the measure is in the interests of average citizens, the parliament’s vote to see digital IDs adopted appears to be one of the latest attempts by EU institutions to pull power away from member-states’ national governments.
According to a report by Euractiv, the vote to see negotiations for a European Digital Identity Framework (eID) to go forward was approved by the bloc’s parliament on Thursday — though the publication describes the process as a mere formality.
Romana Jerkovic, the parliament’s rapporteur for the digital ID programme, heralded its approval of the plans, claiming that they will enable individual EU citizens to have “full control over their own data” while accessing facilities across the bloc.
Such a claim has been heavily disputed by Terhes, however, who instead sees the measure as a dangerous erosion of the rights of those living within the European Union.
“The loss of our freedoms and liberties to the Big State is normally done incrementally, but the passing of the eID Wallet is a big step towards the Chinafication of Europe,” the parliamentarian told Breitbart Europe, repeatedly warning that the measure could give authorities China-like oversight over people’s private lives.
“This Digital Wallet will allow the EU and national authorities (like the Chinese Communist Party) to have technical tools so they can know what the people are doing and to impose control,” Terhes said.
“Something similar to a Chinese style Social Credit System is now made available in the EU, because this eID Wallet is a necessary technology to its implementation,” he alleged.
The Romanian politician went on to compare the coming digital ID measure to the bloc’s system of bloc-wide COVID certificates, which were used to prevent people who had not been vaccinated, recovered from the coronavirus recently, or received a negative test for the disease from travelling to different countries.
“We have already a bad experience with the EU’s Digital Covid Certificate, which was advertised as ‘facilitating’ freedom of movement, but it was, in fact, used to restrict and control people’s movement if their status or behaviour did not please state authorities,” he explained.
At the height of the bloc’s lockdown hysteria such controls were not enough for many in Brussels, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at one point pushing for the Union to adopt a bloc-wide forced vaccination mandate requiring people to get jabbed against the disease.
“How we can encourage and potentially think about mandatory vaccination within the European Union, this needs discussion,” the Commission President said in late 2021, adding that she wanted a “common approach” to the issue across the bloc.
The measure would have likely been similar to those enshrined in law by Austria, for example — although the German-speaking nation’s attempts to actually implement the policy eventually failed miserably.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.