display

For months, the Federal Ministry of Health only responded evasively to questions about a digital corona vaccination card, but now it suddenly has to go very quickly: On Wednesday, Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) wrote to various German companies via an emergency award procedure.

According to information from WELT from corporate circles, he wants an answer as early as Monday.

On Friday, Deutsche Telekom confirmed on request that it wanted to participate in the tender and that it would respond in good time.

Other companies will follow.

But a deadline of Wednesday to Monday for a public tender for such a relevant and multi-million dollar project is at least unusual - and indicates that the ministry has had discussions on the subject with the companies involved for weeks.

In the first wave in the summer, a working group was founded at EU level, says Andreas Grode, strategy advisor to health informatics specialist Gematik, whose majority shareholder is the Ministry of Health.

“In this working group, it was found in autumn that it is now very relevant to think about vaccination certificates,” said Grode on Friday in a conversation with the Bitkom association, which can be found on YouTube.

The actual development began six weeks before Christmas.

EU wants to introduce corona vaccination pass by summer

In three months, Europe should get a uniform vaccination certificate.

The EU summit agreed on this.

The Chancellor agreed, but pointed out a few hurdles.

Whether the passport is linked to freedom of travel is also controversial in the EU.

Source: WORLD / Alina Quast

display

By then, at the latest, the Ministry of Health knew that the development of a forgery-proof vaccination certificate would be necessary.

So why has Spahns Haus hesitated so long to officially commission the development, why did the minister answer questions for months only with references to the electronic patient record planned for 2022?

One reason could be the constitutional consequences that result directly from proof of immunity.

"As early as May of last year, the Federal Ministry of Health asked the Ethics Council to deal with proof of immunity," says Steffen Augsberg, constitutional law expert at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen and member of the German Ethics Council, in an interview with WELT.

“Since the summer at the latest, it could be assumed that a forgery-proof vaccination certificate would be necessary.

Against this background, the reluctance of the federal government to do so is relatively incomprehensible to me, especially if you look at the constitutional side. "

This is exactly what it is all about: "If, on the one hand, the risk groups are vaccinated and, on the other hand, the vaccination significantly lowers the infectiousness, the limitation of the vaccinated people's freedom of liberty can hardly be justified." Done enough.

“It makes sense that vaccination cards are only part of a broader effort that includes additional tests in particular.

However, there is no claim that everyone should remain in restrictions as long as possible. "

"People will no longer put up with this"

display

In addition, the unvaccinated would not be disadvantaged by the fact that the vaccinated could go to the pub again, the ethics expert points out.

"On the contrary: as a society, we benefit from it." He therefore expects that vaccinated people will take legal action against the restrictions.

"People will no longer put up with it - and they should have a good chance with complaints like this."

Mario Brandenburg, technology policy spokesman for the FDP, also points out that the sequence of vaccinations was deliberately designed so that vulnerable people first receive a corona vaccination.

"As soon as these particularly sensitive groups have received the vaccine, there is no longer any reason to restrict the rights of freedom for these groups of people - especially if there is a forgery-proof vaccination certificate decided by the federal government."

At the end of December, Spahn had already spoken out against special rights for vaccinated people - at least until everyone had the opportunity to get vaccinated.

In a questioning in the Bundestag on Wednesday, Spahn only said that the question of what follows from the vaccination certificate requires “its own debate”, which “without a doubt” should be conducted in the German Bundestag.

display

Perhaps also to avoid this debate, Spahn is currently trying to downplay the importance of the digital vaccination certificate: The digital vaccination certificate is, according to Spahn, only a "temporary" solution because from January 1, 2022 in the electronic patient file ( ePA) a digital vaccination certificate for all vaccinations comes.

But Spahn is wrong.

The ePA does not even meet the EU requirements for a digital vaccination certificate.

This must be forgery-proof, clearly assignable to a person and universally readable.

But that is exactly what the EPR is not.

Mark Langguth, one of the developers of the ePA at Gematik, also writes on Twitter.

The ePA does not come with a large vaccination card, but “an electronic copy of the paper ID”, a “digital ID, unfortunately without legal relevance (unregulated)”.

Against this background, it seems remarkable that there has been no communication for months and that it is now to be developed quickly in a covert process.

Jan Ziekow from the German University of Administrative Sciences in Speyer warns that this could also have legal consequences.

"The procedure without a competition has the lowest degree of transparency - it can only be chosen for specific reasons." For example, because a company holds licenses for the necessary technology or because only a few companies are considered capable of doing so.

The tight deadline between the invitation to tender and the submission of offers could also fall on Spahn's feet.

"Since only five days including the weekend is at least sporty." A lawsuit against the award procedure could at least initially be successful - and would delay the proof of vaccination even further.

Here you can listen to our WELT podcasts

We use the player from the provider Podigee for our WELT podcasts.

We need your consent so that you can see the podcast player and to interact with or display content from Podigee and other social networks.

Activate social networks

I consent to content from social networks being displayed to me.

This allows personal data to be transmitted to third party providers.

This may require the storage of cookies on your device.

More information can be found here.

“Everything on shares” is the daily stock market shot from the WELT business editorial team.

Every morning from 7 a.m. with the financial journalists Moritz Seyffarth and Holger Zschäpitz.

For stock market experts and beginners.

Subscribe to the podcast on

Spotify

,

Apple Podcast

,

Amazon Music

and

Deezer

.

Or directly via

RSS feed

.