European green light for CovidCheck at work

By Camille Frati Switch to French for original article

The General Court of the EU has just handed down its first judgment concerning the obligation to present a Covid certificate for access to the workplace. This is a signal to national courts dealing with the same issue in Luxembourg and across Europe.

Could it be the lovely month of May or the political, economic and moral repercussions of the war in Ukraine? In any case, Covid-19 seems to be forgotten – or rather dormant in favour of a continued decline in infections and less aggressive variants. The issue of CovidCheck, which raised the temperature over the winter, is not settled, however, and is likely to return to the public debate in the autumn when the next wave begins to be felt.

Ideally, the appeals brought to court by civil servants and employees should have been successful before then. This will not be the case. The four civil servants who objected in November 2021 to the introduction of the CovidCheck for access to their workplace were dismissed in summary proceedings – i.e. the administrative court did not consider it necessary to examine the case urgently. "The execution of the contested decisions does not cause serious and definitive harm to the applicants", the judge ruled. They will have to wait until September… 2023, due to the shortage of judges, to defend their position in court.

The wave of employee appeals promised by the unions as early as November 2021 did not happen, however, supplanted by the wave of infections with the Omicron variant in December and January, which thus offered a full CovidCheck to infected recalcitrants.

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