The awful truth about the EU has been exposed

Brussels purports to be a guardian of rights, but is strangely silent about the treatment of the unjabbed

Every now and then, the EU goes into full-scale denunciation mode – ordinarily provoked by an “outrageous” action by one of its Eastern European members.

For instance, earlier this year, the Hungarian government introduced legislation which would limit the teaching of “LGBT ideology” in schools. Gosh, did the EU Parliament go to war. It immediately passed emergency legislation to take legal action against Hungary for breaking the bloc’s “values, principles and law”. Everyone from Ursula von der Leyen to Emmanuel Macron joined in, saying that the heavy-handed Hungarian law was a threat to all of Europe.

This past week, however, both the bigwigs of the EU and the Parliament itself have been silent in the face of a far more widespread infringement of liberties. Austria announced that it was going to send its citizenry into yet another lockdown. And that from February it would be mandatory for all citizens to have the Covid vaccination. No ifs or buts. In the future, if you wish to leave your house in Austria, you will have to be vaccinated.

Germany looks set to follow suit, while a partial lockdown is already in place. Restrictions on those people who have not been vaccinated have now been tightened up in Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. There have been violent clashes in Rotterdam between anti-lockdown protesters and police.

So how is it that a part of a population can be held in their houses and the EU finds nothing to say about it? Is this not an infringement on the freedom of individuals? Is the idea of confining a certain group to their houses based on their medical status not the grossest infringement on liberty any government could impose, short of actually imprisoning the populace?

The truth is that at such moments the EU’s one-directional mindset is exposed. The bloc dreams many dreams, but one of them is of a continent which seeks to safeguard more and more minority rights until everybody in the EU is free to be whatever they want to be. There is something to be said for this. But it is also simplistic and limiting.

For instance, it can find no place for questions or challenges which do not fit its own interpretation of the world. It is true that there are areas of Europe where it is harder to be gay or trans than others. But there are now countries that will not allow you to live a life if you do not want to take a Covid vaccine.

I happen to disagree with the anti-vaxxers. I was no more concerned about taking the Covid vaccine than I was about taking the range of jabs I have had to have throughout my life for travelling through Africa and parts of the Far East. I did not fear the vaccine, and nor did I see any reasonable reason to avoid taking it.

But a certain portion of all our populations disagrees. I think those people are misguided. But they have concerns that any liberal society should regard as legitimate, however wrongheaded. If Covid were Ebola then perhaps it would require the heavyhanded treatments that we now see. But it is not. It is a disease that disproportionately targets certain groups of people. Such as the obese. Has any country even yet bothered to run a serious campaign trying to stop obesity in our societies? Of course not. Because again there are things that are legitimate to concern yourself with and things which apparently aren’t if they do not fit the particular parameters of your concern.

Whenever the EU is attacking Poland or Hungary, it does so purporting to be the guardian and ultimate guarantor of the rights of EU citizens. But as millions across Europe attempt to protect their most basic rights – and the vaccinated and unvaccinated alike are punished – the EU is nowhere to be seen. It is not that its commitments are skin deep.

It is that they are narrow and political in their nature. A fact that has never been clearer.