Is compulsory vaccination introduced during the Covid pandemic legitimate? During a global health emergency and as serious as the one we are going through, can the state demand that citizens be given a drug? As this is an unprecedented situation in the history of the republics, the Constitutional Court is now being referred to for the first time to rule on this issue. And all this goes back to the appeal against the University of Palermo, filed by a trainee enrolled in the third year of nursing studies who was not admitted to the training course in health institutions because he was not vaccinated, which is primarily the TAR was rejected and therefore considered compulsory vaccination to be legitimate.
The Sicilian Cga invested the thorny issue in a resolution adopted in the Council Chamber with the intervention of Rosanna De Nictolis (President), Maria Stella Boscarino (Draftsperson), Marco Buricelli, Giovanni Ardizzone and Nino Caleca (Advisor). A measure that seems to have fallen out of time, since a large proportion of Italians have now been vaccinated and many loosenings are underway. However, the decision of the Constitutional Court could not only have consequences for the future (possible further vaccination doses, other pandemics and emergency situations), but also for the past: if the compulsory vaccination were declared contrary to the principles of the charter, citizens who are undergoing treatment to seek compensation from the state for even minor side effects caused by the vaccination.
The Cga, examining the student’s appeal against the University of Palermo, considered “the question of the constitutional legitimacy of Article 4, paragraphs 1 and 2, of Legislative Decree 44/2021 (transformed into Law 76/2021) to be relevant and nonobvious unfounded ), in the part in which on the one hand it provides for the vaccination obligation of health workers and on the other hand for the suspension of the exercise of the health professions due to noncompliance with the vaccination obligation Articles 3, 4, 32, 33, 34, 97 of the Constitution “
This is due to several aspects: “Regarding the number of adverse events, the inadequacy of passive and active pharmacovigilance, the lack of involvement of general practitioners in prevaccinal triage and in any case the lack of a triage phase of indepth examinations and even of Covidpositive/ Negative tests “which, according to the Cga, do not allow us to consider, at the current stage of development of antiCovid vaccines and scientific evidence, the condition established by the Constitutional Court , to justify mandatory vaccination only if, among other things, to be expected is that it does not adversely affect the state of health of the obligated person, with the exception of consequences “which appear normal and therefore tolerable”.
The Cga continues: “It is therefore doubtful whether medicinal products against which such side effects are raised meet the constitutional parameters mentioned”, i.e. Article 32 of the Basic Law, specifically under the side effects of the Council for Administrative Justice, “obviously also serious diseases , which in some cases can irreversibly affect the state of health of the vaccinated subject, leading to disability or, in the most unfortunate cases, death”.
The decision states: “While severe reactions account for a minimal proportion of the total reported adverse events; but the criterion of compulsory treatment established by the Constitutional Court does not seem to leave any room for a quantitative assessment, excluding the legitimacy of imposing compulsory vaccination with preparations whose effects on the health of the vaccinated exceed the threshold of normal tolerability, leaving no room for the admission of serious and of deadly adverse events, provided they are relative to the few vaccinated population, a criterion which, moreover, would imply delicate ethical profiles (e.g. who is responsible for determining the percentage of “dispensable citizens).