At least someone is smart...

EU court upholds Parliament’s coronavirus rules

Parliament can demand of vaccine certificate, test or proof of recovery to enter its buildings.

BY DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

The Court of Justice of the European Union on Tuesday rejected a challenge to the European Parliament's COVID rules, saying EU legislation can require that elected officials and staff show a vaccination certificate, negative test or proof of recovery to enter its buildings.

The Parliament's sanitary rules, which were adopted in late October, had faced a legal challenge from some members of the Parliament and their aides. But in its ruling, the Court refused to suspend the rules, saying they posed no obstacle to members of the Parliament fulfilling their official duties.

The president of the CJEU had previously ordered a provisional modification of the rules allowing MEPs to enter the Parliament's buildings — in Brussels, Strasbourg and Luxembourg — based on a negative self-test. Those modifications still apply.

"The decision to condition access to the buildings of the Parliament in its three places of work on presentation of an EU digital COVID certificate, or an equivalent certificate, has neither the purpose nor the effect of calling into question the exercise of mandates of deputies elected to the Parliament or the exercise of professional activities," the Court wrote in its decision.

"As for the alleged direct attack on the representational power of MEPs and their ability to work in a meaningful way and effective in that the contested decision also applies to their assistants and staff Parliament," the Court found that opponents of the rules "put forward no specific argument to establish that these persons are not in a position to comply in good time with the access conditions imposed."

In upholding Parliament's health restrictions, the Court avoided potential allegations of hypocrisy, given that anyone currently seeking to enter the Court's own buildings now must undergo a mandatory temperature check, and those permitted entry (with temperature no higher than 37.5 degrees) are obligated to wear masks.