Address by Emmanuel Macron: "The health pass introduces a fundamental break in our social contract"

Consultant and political analyst, Mathieu Slama works for several media, notably Le Figaro and Le Huffington Post.

He has published

The War of the Worlds, Reflections on Putin's Crusade Against the West

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This astonishing sentence was uttered by Emmanuel Macron during his speech last night, which marks a further step in the democratic disintegration of our country.

The extension of the health pass, in particular, constitutes an essential attack not only on our freedoms, but on our social contract and on the very concept of citizenship as it has been imposed since Rousseau.

By extending the health pass to all places of leisure and culture bringing together more than 50 people, by extending it to cafes, restaurants, shopping centers, hospitals, retirement homes, medico-social establishments as well as trains and coaches for long-distance journeys, the government

makes

the life of the unvaccinated impossible, or very difficult. By doing this, it establishes a de facto inequality between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated and therefore introduces a fundamental break in our social contract, based on the citizen's rational adherence to the general interest, his free and informed consent and the equality before the law. All of these founding principles of our democracy are shattered into pieces.

The government is advancing step by step, undergoes the evolutions of the crisis and each time goes a little further in the authoritarian and liberticidal measures, ending up by withdrawing from its old promises.

Mathieu slama

First of all, in this decision taken by Macron, there is a denial of the word given. Hadn't the government promised that the health pass could not concern everyday acts? Emmanuel Macron had he not announced that vaccination would not be made compulsory, and that his objective was to convince by information and pedagogy? What has happened since the start of the crisis: the government is moving forward step by step, undergoes the evolutions of the crisis and each time goes a little further in authoritarian and liberticidal measures, ending up to deduct from its old promises.

What can be said, on the other hand, of the way in which this extremely serious decision is taken? Since the start of the health crisis, Parliament has been reduced to a registration chamber and all decisions are taken by a single man, the Head of State, assisted by an unelected Scientific Council and deliberating within the Council of Defense in the greatest opacity. It is no different from the decision last night, where Macron announced the new health measures without consulting Parliament, which will be ordered to vote on the law as a matter of urgency and without any real democratic debate. This major crisis in our parliamentary and democratic institutions should question anyone who cares about the balance of our institutions.

Then there are huge legal issues in these announcements. The Council of State had validated the health pass on July 6 on the grounds that it did not concern daily activities, while the CNIL also gave the green light because the initial version of the health pass excluded "the activities of life. current (workplaces, restaurants, shops, etc.) ”. How will these institutions, supposed to protect us from arbitrariness and attacks on our fundamental freedoms, justify their (probable) validation of the new version of the past? Will they be withdrawn? Justify this hardening by the rise of the Delta variant? Since the start of the pandemic, the Council of State and the Constitutional Council have nothave ceased to legitimize the measures that are most detrimental to our fundamental rights and our Constitution. Today, there are no longer any legal safeguards against the excesses of health power.

The generalized health pass is a whole repressive and disciplinary system which is set in motion surreptitiously, at odds with the democratic principles which founded our Republic.

Mathieu slama

These announcements also mean that we are entering a repressive society, where the police will be able, as Gabriel Attal recalled after the intervention of the Head of State, to carry out blind checks of the pass and repress the recalcitrant; a society where the French themselves can check the QR Code of their fellow citizens and thus play a police role; a society where every action of daily life will be subject to strict and controlled disciplinary rules. In short, the generalized health pass is a whole repressive and disciplinary system that is set in motion surreptitiously, at odds with the democratic principles that founded our Republic.

The way in which the government has orchestrated this bringing the unvaccinated to a halt also deserves a word about it. For several weeks, the government has decided to make the unvaccinated the scapegoat for the health situation. The government rhetoric is simple:

. A whole re-containment blackmail has taken place, resulting in an absolutely detestable climate where the unvaccinated has become a sort of collective scarecrow. On social networks, hatred is pouring out, some even going so far as to ask that the recalcitrant be locked up or that they be made to pay all the hospital costs related to the Covid. And on television channels, some columnists took part in this hateful climate, some even going so far as to call for the police to come and pick up the unvaccinated to bring them to vaccination centers, others calling for the most difficult possible life of the unvaccinated. The entire country is seized with repressive and authoritarian fury.

What is most worrying is that the majority of citizens themselves support these attacks on the rule of law.

Mathieu slama

Here we have to wonder about the democratic rupture that all this represents. The permanent state of emergency, the breakdown of equality between citizens, the establishment of a disciplinary and repressive system, this extreme bureaucratization of social relations, all of this has no equivalent in our recent history. . It is even, as Giorgio Agamben has nicely written, a complete reversal of the very idea of ​​citizenship, where the new citizen has rights only on condition that he produces proof of his healthy. Do we realize what the fact that citizenship is now conditional on good health means? That a vaccinated citizen has rights that an unvaccinated one does not have? That the life ofan unvaccinated one is now similar to what we experienced during the lockdown? All the wounds inflicted on our democratic model since the start of the crisis will not heal easily. What is most worrying is that the majority of citizens themselves support these attacks on the rule of law. And that the disciplinary measures work, as evidenced by the saturation of the DoctoLib vaccination appointment site a few minutes after the speech by the Head of State. Without checks and balances and with such popular approval, how can we get out of this spiral of freedom that seems to have no end?What is most worrying is that the majority of citizens themselves support these attacks on the rule of law. And that the disciplinary measures work, as evidenced by the saturation of the DoctoLib vaccination appointment site a few minutes after the speech by the Head of State. Without checks and balances and with such popular approval, how can we get out of this spiral of freedom that seems to have no end?What is most worrying is that the majority of citizens themselves support these attacks on the rule of law. And that the disciplinary measures work, as evidenced by the saturation of the DoctoLib vaccination appointment site a few minutes after the speech by the Head of State. Without checks and balances and with such popular approval, how can we get out of this spiral of freedom that seems to have no end?have no end?have no end?

So let's try, faced with the hysteria that clouds our judgment, to lay down some clear principles and common sense. First, there is no need for a health pass or compulsory vaccination. Vaccination protects those who decide to be vaccinated against serious forms of the virus: the unvaccinated person is therefore only a threat to himself. Vaccination is therefore a purely individual choice which must be the sole rational decision of each citizen. The vaccinated people are protected, the others choose in their soul and conscience to take a risk for themselves. Then citizenship is not divided. The health pass, which

creates

two categories of citizens depending on whether they are vaccinated or not, is an ethical, legal and democratic aberration. It has no place in our democracy. Finally, the virus will not go away. You have to learn to live with it, get out of the state of emergency and have confidence in everyone's free will and responsibility. France is not a schoolyard to be disciplined, but a country where citizens have duties and rights, and among these rights is the freedom to dispose of one's body. The state must encourage the French to remain cautious and protect themselves from the virus, but it must do so as it did for the AIDS epidemic: by privileging information and education rather than coercion. It is only in this way that thewe will find a path which is that of freedom and not of servitude.