Whither Europe (1): Normalising Covid Passports

The EU is poised for a transformation towards centralised control and tyranny, and here are four key policy decisions that will affect you wherever you are

Prelim: I’ve penned another long-form essay for the good people over at Propaganda in Focus, an online webzine brought into existence by Mark Crispin Miller, Piers Robinson, and others a few years ago.

It’s based on initial writings in these pages, and since its content constitutes a refinement (due to editorial oversight, which result in a bit more careful wording), I thought you’d might find the essay interesting, too.

A word of warning: it’s a para-academic piece—keeping with the Propaganda in Focus style—running at over 10K words in the final version; therefore, we decided to split it in two for the long-form essay, but I’ll be posting it here in four instalments.

While I greatly appreciate the opportunity to publish with Propaganda in Focus—I’ve done that before submitting essays—this time, I was invited by the editors to furnish them with an article. So I thought I could slip in something more ‘critical’ about the Covid poison/death juices and what their introduction did to pharmacovigilance—but after a few weeks not hearing from them, the editors told me that they wouldn’t publish that segment as it would require external review.

This is the proximal origin (pun intended, gotta pull your punches consciously) of the below-linked posting on what Norwegian public health officialdom did (and it goes a long way towards my frequent interactions with Martin Bassani about the unwillingness and/or pervasiveness of the evil that surrounds us constantly, and which has, apparently, grown to such grotesque proportions, and has become so pervasive that even mentioning—to a ‘critical’ outlet, no less—stuff that’s been in the public domain for over a decade has become so controversial™ that it’s hard to get it published.

‘Rare AEs’, or: Shifting Goalposts in Pharmacovigilance

So, with that factoid in mind, here’s the introductory segment plus part one of my essay ‘Whither Europe’, and I hope you’ll find it interesting enough to forward the Propaganda in Focus version to those in your circles who are no longer totally beholden to the narrative™, whatever it may be these days.

Translation of all non-English passages, emphases, and [snark] mine.

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Whither Europe: An Introduction

Not too long ago, European integration promised peace, prosperity, and the sustained betterment of the human condition. As of spring 2025, the Brussels-led bloc appears poised to change beyond recognition. Led by politicians of questionable reputation — and even worse characters — like Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen (once in the running to succeed former chancellor Merkel, but she was too incompetent and corrupt, hence she was ‘exported’ to Brussels) or ECB head Christine Lagarde (a convicted felon), as well as the festering corruption at the heart of the EU’s parliament, the purported European dream is turning into a nightmare before our very eyes. Rosy-eyed prospects for the ravaged Old World are rapidly giving way to increased centralisation and militarisation while the European publics are bamboozled into acquiescence by the appearance of a lawful and, above all, legitimate progress under the conditions of presumed normalcy.

While the latter sentiment might appear plausible at first sight given the realities of our post-pandemic condition, this essay seeks to show that what is currently going on is a lot of things, but it ain’t normal. Whereas it is perfectly obvious that there is no such thing as a constant salience to any body politic over time, ‘Europe’ — by which is meant the EU/EEC — is changing so swiftly these days that it is, in fact, becoming increasingly hard to keep track of the multi-dimensional, all-out assault on the constitutional foundations of the various EU member-states. What is going on these days, then, may be characterised as an EU leadership class that is both speeding up long-held aims of creating an ‘ever closer union’ as envisioned in the 1983 Solemn Declaration on European Union while, at the same time, also seeking to broaden and deepen its reach. This two-pronged pursuit feeds rising anti-EU sentiment, fuelled in part by the (re)surgence of what is typically (mis)labelled (right-wing) populism. This cacophony of developments points to a perplexing conundrum: if EU expansion is supposedly the resolution to many, if not all, of the continent’s woes, why these dissonant tones?

This essay relates four key policy decisions that are both here to stay and whose implications transcend the bloc’s boundaries. In the first part, a key aspect of the EU’s Covid Pandemic management, namely the adoption by the World Health Organization (WHO) of the ‘digital Covid certificates’ as worldwide standard. In the second part, we take a close look at what Politico recently, and fairly tellingly, considered Europe’s ‘Hamiltonian moment’, by which is meant the ongoing efforts by Brussels to turn the European Union into a federalised super-state with increasingly centralised command-and-control structures. Due to its length, I have elected to split the essay in two, and in the second instalment, two further milestones are examined: on the one hand, we shall discuss the implications of the EU Commission’s declaration, via a little-noticed press release in autumn 2024, of (de facto sovereignty): Brussels may now issue bills and bonds, i.e., collateralised debt obligations in the name of the entire bloc. Lastly, there is the tightening of control over the bloc’s peoples via yet another EU-level bureaucracy in statu nascendi, the Authority for Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism, or AMLA. All that is required to launch a veritable armada of administrative penalties is—the suspicion of potentially illegal intent. Needless to say, this is only possible to do by doing away with due process as it is commonly understood, the presumption of innocence, police investigative procedures, and the independence of the judiciary of the various member-states on the other hand.

All four policy decisions have a few things in common: they are all manifestations of political blinders and (para)ideological convictions held by politicians, journalists, and experts alike. These result in a profound, and growing, disconnect between an increasingly detached leadership class whose influence(-peddling) over mainstream media reinforces the growing gap between Brussels and ‘the European peoples’. In combination, the former manifest as confirmation bias (’see, it worked in this context, let’s try this elsewhere’) while the intermingling of Eurocrats, experts, and legacy media creates the functional equivalent of Plato’s Cave. Needless to say, voices that are deemed ‘inappropriate’ or ‘out of bounds’ are rarely, if ever, heard, hence the seemingly endless ‘surprise’ of these very same elites when the electorate votes for the wrong candidate. As more and more national sovereignty is vested in EU institutions, and with most of the bloc’s thinking classes holding largely similar views about the benefits and wisdom of doing so, the ballot box remains one of the last opportunities to express dissent.

At the same time, given the realities of what legal scholars call ‘transposition’ — by which is meant the ex-post rubber-stamping of national legislation (sic) after Brussels decided (typically by executive fiat) — voting is increasingly turning into an action of last resort. Albeit chastised by virtually all legacy media outlets and actively dismissed by the present’s milieux juste, or ‘uniparty’, criticism of what Brussels does is typically derided in equally idiosyncratic ways. As the TU Dortmund’s recent ‘Journalism&Democracy’ study showed, for instance, two-thirds of German journalists position themselves as being left to far-left of centre, thus resulting in biased mainstream media reporting. That kind of coverage is the primary source of the information for fellow journalists, staffers, and politicians alike. In short: those who are deemed to lack the insights, connections, and salaries of the EU’s thinking classes — Europe’s equivalent of what Hillary Clinton infamously chided as a ‘basket of deplorables’ in 2016 — are voting ‘wrongly’, it is often said in a tone of resentment and condescension.

With these preliminaries settled, this essay discusses what are arguably the EU’s most consequential policy decisions of the past couple of years whose relevance transcends the bloc’s borders: first, the institutionalisation of a ‘domestic’ passport to restrict freedom of movement deriving from the bloc’s Covid policies [this posting]; and second, the creeping militarisation of the bloc via the Commission’s unilateral abrogation of key aspects of the foundational treaties [the second instalment]. The looming arrogation of de facto sovereignty via issuance of bills and bonds in the name of the EU and the push towards command and control of all payments are the subject of the second instalment of the present piece. While the first instalment relates issues that largely fall into the category of ‘domestic’ affairs, the second part covers what Politico recently, and fairly tellingly, considered Europe’s ‘Hamiltonian moment’. I have endeavoured to furnish the reader also with a few concluding lines at the end of the [essay].

‘Never let a crisis go to waste’: The Normalisation of Covid Passports

The abomination with the many names — which we shall label ‘Covid Passport’ here — will stay with EU residents well beyond the end of the WHO-declared ‘Pandemic’. Introduced over several months under various names, public health (sic) authorities across the EU/EEC/Schengen area launched a ‘digital Covid certificate in order to facilitate safe free movement during the COVID-19 pandemic’ in summer 2021. While the EU’s thinking and chattering classes celebrated its eventual adoption by the World Health Organization on 1 July 2023, its introduction inaugurated ‘vaccination status’-dependent restrictions of access and outright discrimination, such as a ‘ban for unvaccinated Italians from social life’ or ‘from using public transport’ in 2022. In a quite ominous Orwellian distortion of reality, none of the issues that public health officialdom was later forced to admit — most prominently, the admission by Pfizer executive Janine Small that the mainly used modRNA injections do not prevent transmission and the statement by Emer Cooke, head of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), that ‘no safety signal for increased mortality with any of the authorised COVID-19 vaccines has been identified to date’ (that is, by 20 April 2023) — changed the EU’s self-congratulatory stance.

Thus, while the EU’s temporary Covid Passport regulation expired on 30 June 2023, ‘on 1 July 2023, the WHO took up the EU system of digital COVID-19 certification to establish a global system that will help protect citizens across the world from on-going and future health threats, including pandemics’. In other words: what happened in the EU didn’t stay in the EU.

If anything, both the EU and the WHO have learned their lesson — as the newly inaugurated ‘Global Digital Health Certification Network’ (GDHCN) further explains,

there is a recognition of an existing gap and continued need for a global mechanism that can support bilateral verification of the provenance of health documents for pandemic preparedness and continuity of care.

These Orwellian language games do not stop at this rather insufferable corporate/NGO boilerplate verbiage, however, as the core ‘benefits’ of sharing one’s personal medical data with the WHO are said to include ‘obtain[ing] agency over [one’s] own health information’, enable healthcare providers to ‘more easily verify health records’, and, most troublingly in light of the experiences with the restrictions on the freedoms of movement and association imposed during the so-called Pandemic, ‘governments can provide standards and mechanisms to issue and verify that records are linked to authorized institutions’. In other words: authorities may change access rules on the go. If you are inclined to disbelieve me, check out the WHO’s recent ‘Polaris’ exercise and the after-action reporting courtesy of IFLScience.com.

Thus, while the ‘emergency’ phase of the last WHO-declared ‘Pandemic’ was ended by the EU in late April 2022, Commission chief Von der Leyen endorsed the ‘move from emergency mode to a more sustainable management’, as Politico reported at the time. Consequently, EU institutions signed off on extending the EU Digital COVID Certificate for another year until 30 June 2023. On the very next day, the EU’s new arrangements with the WHO entered into force, and the rest, as far as time-worn adages go, is history.

As a post-script to this first part, mention shall be made of the EU Digital Covid Certificate’s Wikipedia entry—which doubles as a repository of common knowledge — which merely states the following:

With 51 non-EU countries and territories connected to the system in addition to the 27 member states, the EU Digital COVID Certificate is a global standard for COVID-19 certification…The EU Digital COVID Certificate system expired on 30 June 2023.

We may therefore conclude this first part noting the absence of its successor, the GDHCN (Global Digital Health Certification Network) and giving a voice to how Stella Kyriakides, Commissioner for Health and Food Safety since 2019, described this transposition of EU law (sic):

By using European best practices we contribute to digital health standards and interoperability globally…a powerful example of how alignment between the EU and the WHO can deliver better health for all, in the EU and across the world.

Needless to say, the ‘collaboration between WHO/Europe and the EU is more than just political and technical’, as WHO Regional Director for Europe Dr Hans Henri P. Kluge described it in February 2024. It also consists of ‘growing financial cooperation’ and ‘the shared values’, said to ‘drive our collaboration’. Hence, whatever you and I may think and (dis)like about the Covid Passport, that shameful tool of evidence-free population control and denial of access based on one’s ‘vaccination status’, it is here to stay. As mentioned earlier, adoption by the WHO signifies that the EU Commission’s ‘digital solution’ to Covid containment was adopted seamlessly by the World Health Organization, thus permanently institutionalising what was imposed as a temporary emergency measure.

In short—and with explicit reference to the underlying financial entanglements (incentives) between the EU and WHO—if the EU’s website had a dedicated entry entitled ‘mission creep’, there would hardly be a more apt example. While you and I may have thought public health officialdom is done here, these digital ‘vaccination’ passports are here to stay. And so are the Orwellian distortions of yet another key term to which we turn next.

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