Vienna, Austria in January

This morning/afternoon.

The Austrian government said that it won’t start enforcing a vaccine mandate for most adults in mid-March as it had planned.

Police were to start checking people’s vaccination status with the unjabbed facing fines starting at €600.

Irish/Austrian Human rights lawyer David Langwallner writes:

‘I feared the Austrians or their officialdom had gone mad. That the land of Mozart and Wittgenstein, the epicentre of modern civilisation, had reverted to atavistic, authoritarian tendencies.

‘The decision was against the tide and was bonkers and unenforceable. No national emergency has been declared, thus the Austrian Constitutional Court would have to assess this in terms of a derogation non-applied for in Article 4 and Article 8 of the European Court of Human Rights convention.

‘Many citizens, particularly in southern or western Austria, wish to be non-vaccinated. Since there is or was an emergency, the liberty right was particularly obvious and those who refused to pay fines could have made a challenge. The Austrian Constitutional Court would have intervened and there is nothing like a Hapsburgian judge.

‘The problem is not whether you choose or not to be vaccinated, boosted, double vaccinated or not. The problem is one of a slippery slope to persecute those who exercise a choice and to impose control.

‘If the science were clear,  that endleess futuristic drugs would, for example, control Omicron, then public health considerations, in terms of legal doctrines such as proportionality would be apt, but there is no clear evidence of same.

‘Civility has won.’

Austria suspends vaccine mandate before enforcement starts (ABC)

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