Senate rejects draft law on mandatory green certificate at work

Senators have rejected the bill on the mandatory COVID-19 digital certificate for the staff of some public and private institutions.

The bill was rejected by 67 to 60 votes, with two abstentions. PSD and AUR were the parties that voted against the draft law. Two extra votes were needed for the law to pass.

PNL, UDMR and USR voted in favor. However, three USR MPs were absent, as one was in the US, and the other two were on the plane during the vote. At the same time, Liberal senators PNL George Scarlat and Alexandru Nazare abstained from voting.

PSD senator Streinu Cercel claimed that the draft law “is conceptually wrong”, arguing that “both the vaccinated and unvaccinated can get infected equally. “We are introducing a discrimination through vaccination”, Cercel said.

AUR senator Claudiu Târziu said: “We are getting back to dictatorship. Today’s provisions are the expression of a fierce Stalinism. If you vote this bill you will trigger an explosive social crisis. The vaccine is an experimental treatment”, he claimed.

Independent senator Diana Șoșoacă also had a controversial stance: “You drew Romania back to the Hitler era. Only the Jews were compelled to present a document to go to the grocery store“, she said, when the Senate speaker Anca Dragu cut her microphone.

According to the initiators, lawmakers National Liberal Party (PNL) and the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (UDMR), the draft law states that the certificate is proof of one of the following requirements: the completion of a full SARS-CoV-2 vaccination scheme more than 10 days before; recovery from the disease and being between the 15th and the 180th day after the confirmation of the infection with this virus; a negative result of an RT-PCR test (taken no more than 72 hours before) or of a rapid antigen test (taken no more than 48 hours before).

The violation of the obligations incumbent on the legal persons represents a contravention and is sanctioned with a fine from 50,000 lei to 100,000 lei, the bill also stipulates.

The provisions would not have applied to the authorities and institutions within the judicial authority, to whom the provisions of Law no. 114/2021 on some measures in justice in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic would have applied instead.

The legislative proposal regarding the establishment of some measures in health care, during the state of alert, for the personnel in some public and private units was sent for debate and adoption to the Chamber of Deputies, decision-making forum in this case.