The Constitutional Council Approves The Health Pass For Large Crowds

Description of The Constitutional Council Approves The Health Pass For Large Crowds

This device will condition access to events of more than 1,000 people on the presentation of a negative test, a vaccination certificate or a certificate of recovery after contamination.
The government is authorized to continue its health policy. The Constitutional Council gave its approval to the bill relating to the management of the exit from the health crisis which includes the creation of a health pass. The bill defines a regime for exiting the state of emergency applicable from June 2 to September 30, 2021. On Monday, May 31, the Constitutional Council validated the controversial project of the health pass, the use of which will be limited to large gatherings such as festivals, and subject to several measures limiting attacks on individual freedoms.
Paragraph II of the law, relating to the creation of a health pass system, provides that from June 2, the Prime Minister may by decree issued on the report of the Minister responsible for health, impose on people wishing to travel to or from the French territory and Corsica, to present a negative screening test, proof of vaccination status or a certificate of recovery. Under the same conditions, this will also concern access to large gatherings of people for leisure activities or trade fairs or exhibitions.
Referral by 60 deputies
The Council had been seized by more than 60 deputies, judging that the bill gave "very important powers to the government on bases much too vague and imprecise". The Constitutional Council considers that by "reserving the application of the contested provisions to cases of large gatherings of people, the legislator, who did not have to determine a least quantified threshold, did not disregard the extent of his competence”.
“From all these reasons, the Constitutional Council deduces that the complaints based on the failure to recognize the objective of constitutional value of accessibility and intelligibility of the law and the failure by the legislator to competence must be discarded”, justifies the Council.
In response to the deputies, the government noted in its observations addressed to the Constitutional Council that "none of these criticisms are founded". The legislator specifies that it intends to reserve these measures for "major leisure events such as concerts, festivals or sporting competitions, as well as fairs and trade shows". Taking into account "the diversity of these events", he considers "preferable not to fix one or more thresholds expressed in number of participants, but prescribes that the importance of the gathering be appreciated by the regulatory power according to a concrete and contextualized approach" and that it be "systematically linked to the actual conditions of reception of the public".
A reservation of interpretation on the collection of health data
The members of the Constitutional Council, however, accompanied one of the measures of the text, which must apply from the beginning of June, with an “interpretation reserve”. This involves the integration into the national health data system of data collected as part of the information systems applied to battle the epidemic, like TousAntiCovid.
They believe that the authorities should exclude the telephone or electronic contact details of those concerned from the national health data system.
This system does not already contain "neither the names and surnames of persons, nor their registration number in the national directory of identification of natural persons, nor their address, the identification numbers of health professionals being kept and managed separately from others. data ”, specifies the government in its letter addressed to the Constitutional Council. All health data entered into the national system is also pseudonym zed.