When the majority of the German Ethics Council spoke out in favor of the introduction of a general vaccination requirement, the committee added a recommendation to the resolution: Germany should introduce a "data-safe, national vaccination register".
The ethics council has oriented itself towards Austria, the neighboring country already records the corona vaccination status of all citizens in a central directory.
Doctors must submit vaccinations to the electronic health record.
If the government in Vienna has its way, these will in future be merged with the data from the registration offices.
From March 15, the authorities are expected to impose fines for those who have not been vaccinated.
Stephan Klenner
Editor FAZ objection.
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It is true that the Ethics Council does not explicitly state in its opinion that it should run the same way in Germany in the future. The recommendation to introduce a vaccination register to implement mandatory vaccination, however, suggests it. And the Ethics Council is not alone in this. The Federal Association of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises is even clearer: "Compulsory vaccination without a vaccination register is a toothless tiger," says Alexander Ehlers, chairman of the association's health advisory board. Random checks - for example on trains and buses - cannot effectively check whether citizens are fulfilling a possible obligation. For the trade association, compulsory vaccination and vaccination register therefore belong together. From a legal point of view, this is not mandatory: the Bundestag could decide to make vaccinations compulsory even without a register.A staggered regulation in two independent laws is also conceivable.
The legal policy spokesman for the Greens parliamentary group, Helge Limburg, would like to do without the directory. "Even if compulsory vaccination were introduced, such a register will not help to effectively monitor compliance," he says. The effort is huge, the benefit for the general public is minimal. The member of the Bundestag, who has not yet decided whether he will agree to mandatory vaccination, can only imagine that the vaccination status will be checked on a random basis. Ultimately, the general right of personality of the Basic Law prohibits the introduction of a vaccination register, since it collects massive amounts of data without justification. "Politicians must be aware that a vaccination register in Karlsruhe could be overturned."
Not all lawyers share this view. The chairman of the Society for Data Protection and Data Security, Rolf Schwartmann, considers it possible to introduce a vaccination register in accordance with the constitution. "Since the federal government needs a central option for the state control of mandatory vaccinations in order to effectively implement infection protection law, there should be a sufficient purpose for a central register," writes the Cologne law professor in an article for FAZ objection. The Ethics Council recommendation also raises practical questions. In Austria, the vaccination register was tested in several pilot phases in 2020. It gradually recorded all corona vaccinations from January 2021. In Germany, the structure of the directory would have to be tackled from scratch.The main problem is likely to be the rapid recording of all previous vaccinations.