EUVABECO – more than just a vaccination card

In September 2024, a pilot project to introduce a digital European vaccination card will begin in Germany and other European countries. However, the European Vaccination Card (EVC) is only one component of a comprehensive project called EUVABECO (European Vaccination beyond Covid-19).

Source: Cornelia Margot, fully qualified lawyer, MWGFD e.V., 26 Aug 2024

This project comprises five sub-areas – also known as tools – which will be tested in various European countries over the next few years. Not every country will test every tool. Once these pilot phases have been completed, the results will be analysed and made available to all EU countries. The wording on the website indicates that it will then be up to the individual countries themselves to introduce one tool or another.

After the pilot phase, … validated plans will be shared with the member states to encourage widespread implementation.

However, the stated aim of the EUVABECO project is for the plans to be implemented in all EU countries in order to “improve vaccination efforts”. This means that the alleged freedom of choice of the states can be seen as lip service to reassure citizens.

Which five tools are these?

1. Let’s start with the most harmless. An electronic package leaflet to help ensure that vaccines can be sent and used across borders.

2. Then a modelling and forecasting tool to support public decision-making. This tool is based on the COVID-19 simulator at Saarland University (CoSim project). The aim is to use simulations and modelling to determine how certain measures (lockdowns, school closures, etc.) could affect the various assumed courses of infection.

3. The third tool is called the Clinical Decision System (CDS) and is based on experience already gained in France and Luxembourg.

CDS means, in general and independent of vaccinations:

The personal details about a patient (e.g. age, previous illnesses, medication, etc.) are linked with current scientific findings. AI-controlled recommendations are then generated (procedure for diagnosis / appropriate therapies, etc.). In France, work is currently underway to integrate CDS applications into the electronic patient file.

EUVABECO is “only” concerned with information on recommended or mandatory vaccinations. Reference is made to a French model (MesVaccins.net), which is to serve as the basis for the pilot phase. The MesVaccins application is something between a vaccination record and a patient file. An electronic file that citizens create themselves and fill in with as much personal data as possible. Including information about their living conditions and family situation.

The application then shows the vaccination status for all possible vaccinations and whether you are up to date or not. However, it is not a verification document like a vaccination card. For example, there are notes such as “missing” or “complete immediately” or “due in two months” or “seek individual medical advice” for a vaccination.

You can use this application or you can leave it alone. When visiting a doctor, if the doctor uses something like this and fills it with patient data, you will be given advice. It is conceivable that doctors and hospitals will make the already familiar patient questionnaires even more detailed in order to obtain even more information. Anyone who has an electronic patient file will have to expect corresponding “recommendations” to pop up in the medium term.

The use of health data by health insurance companies in accordance with Section 25b SGB V (which can be objected to), which was newly included in SGB V in March 24, could also be a piece of the puzzle here.

But ultimately, you can safely ignore all this and not even participate. And be vigilant and careful when talking to your doctor.

Of these first three tools, Germany will only test the first during the pilot phase – the electronic patient information leaflet.

Now we come to the two really dangerous tools. The vaccination card and the “vaccination motivation screening”.

4. The digital European Vaccination Card EVC

This will be introduced in Germany on a trial basis from September 2024. Whether and where it will later be introduced permanently is reportedly still open:

The final version of the implementation plans will be published in 2026 so that everyone in every country can use it. At that point, each pilot country will decide whether to proceed with the EVC, and other countries will decide whether to introduce the EVC depending on their individual needs and circumstances.

The above applies here. They want all the tools to increase immunisation rates to be introduced and applied. And then they will do it.

a. What is it good for?

According to the FAQ on the website, it is a “personal record” but not an “official document”. It states:

The EVC does not impose any restrictions or requirements for entry.

This is a non-answer and actually a matter of course, as such a document can only ever be declaratory.

Nevertheless, it should be able to serve as proof of immunisation status in the healthcare sector, for example. It would therefore be equivalent to an EPC, limited to the sub-area of “immunisation”.

Whether it could also be given the same status as the digital Covid certificate remains to be seen. The answer on the FAQ page is evasive.

The digital Covid certificate (DCC) was specially developed to facilitate travel and access to certain services during the Covid-19 pandemic.

This is true, but does not rule out the possibility that other purposes will not be added to the EVC, which is officially being developed for a different purpose, at some point.

The flowery stories about how easily citizens can “manage” their vaccinations with the EVC and how they will have “more control” can be read on the EUVABECO website if required.

Since a look at a conventional vaccination certificate also fulfils this purpose, it will probably be a matter of completely different control options. When studying the crisis team minutes from the RKI and other bodies, you can see the practical hurdles the authorities had to contend with at the beginning of the restriction measures, the (entry) travel regulations and the quarantine rules. Yellow vaccination cards next to QR codes or paper vaccination certificates from all over the world – who wanted to control that? The Federal Border Guard didn’t feel responsible and didn’t have any spare capacity. The airlines waved goodbye – too much effort. The airports objected to having their security staff involved.

How much easier it is to scan a standardised EU QR code and obtain the required information at a glance. So why shouldn’t the EVC – once it is in place – be elevated to the status of an officially recognised verification document? You have to reckon with it.

And the easier and quicker it is, the greater the desire for further control mechanisms in the future. The plan to introduce EUVABECO has been around since at least 2018 and not just since coronavirus. But one thing leads to another. One causes the other and vice versa.

b. What will it look like?

In addition to a digital smartphone application, it will also be available in paper form. With a QR code – and that’s all that matters to the planners.

c. What information will the vaccination card contain?

There are only cloudy hints on the website.

It will contain comprehensive information on vaccination history, including detailed text records, a scannable QR code and downloadable embedded metadata.

This will be the individual’s personal data including national insurance number. Then all the details of when they were vaccinated, by whom, with what and against what. The metadata could include forgery-proof information about the vaccinating organisation, e.g. signatures and certificates. More precise information cannot be found on the websites of foreign, e.g. French or Belgian “lateral-thinking” civil rights organisations, which are very active. At the moment, simply nobody knows.

d. Can it be refused?

In the pilot phase, de jure YES.

Both our pilot projects and the European Vaccination Card (EVC) are designed to be completely voluntary for citizens. The EVC is a digital version of a paper-based vaccination card that allows individuals to own and manage their vaccination data. No centralised data storage system is used. In order for other people to access the citizen’s data, the citizen must intentionally send their data to another person or show their EVC.

It is a voluntary instrument and is not mandatory throughout the EU.

Until it mutates into open sesame. Then voluntariness quickly becomes a sham voluntariness.

e. Dangers

Jean-Claude Juncker:

We decide something, then put it in the room and wait a while to see what happens. If there is no big clamour and no riots because most people don’t understand what has been decided, then we will continue – step by step, until there is no turning back.”
Der Spiegel, 27 December 1999.

On the one hand, there is a danger that Germany will introduce it permanently once the pilot phase is over. And then possibly not on a voluntary basis. In Austria there is already an e-vaccination card that cannot be refused. You can “opt out” of the electronic patient file there, but not from the e-vaccination card.

It must be prevented that a law on the mandatory introduction of the EVC is passed. And this also means that we must make it very clear during the pilot phase that we don’t want anything like this. Whenever someone offers us the chance to try out the blessings of the new vaccination card: NO.

Even if it is later introduced permanently on a voluntary basis and it will be possible to withdraw from it de jure, there is a risk that it will be promoted to a verification and access document like a Covid certificate. Even if only temporarily. Covid today, MPox tomorrow, bird flu the day after tomorrow. Anything that can be easily and digitally controlled will also want to be controlled.

And ultimately it will be able to arouse further desires. Linking with identity documents. Link to the bank account, to the ecological footprint. Part of a comprehensive system of social credit scores. Today, still shrill dreams of the future that nobody is officially talking about. Tomorrow – see the above quote from Juncker – possibly a bitter reality.

5. Screening for vaccination motivation

“Linking data to optimise vaccination campaigns” is what EUVABECO says, complete with comma error. It is modelled on a model that was developed in Belgium during the coronavirus pandemic: the LINK-VACC data linkage study,developed and applied by the Belgian public health authority Sciensano.

This basically had two purposes: vaccination motivation (personal and by no means anonymised) and a pseudonymised “post-marketing observational study”.

Existing data sets were accessed – from insurance records, doctors and “other health sources”. This was easy to do, as in Belgium the electronic ID card is linked to access to electronic patient records, e-prescriptions and health insurance. In addition, everyone who had been tested was recorded with comprehensive personal details. These and other data from “public and private organisations” were linked together.

The risk groups were filtered out from the resulting data sets. The residents of Belgium were then sent a personal invitation letter in descending order of risk personal invitation letter for corona vaccination. This invitation already contained fixed dates for the first and second vaccination. The contact details, including telephone numbers and email addresses, were simply taken from the health insurance documents.

Those contacted in this way had to turn up for the vaccination appointment if possible. They could also arrange another appointment or even cancel completely if they did not want to be vaccinated. This made it very easy to subsequently identify those who remained unvaccinated.

The vaccination data was then statistically analysed, particularly with regard to vaccination effectiveness and possible vaccination breakthroughs. Allegedly also in terms of safety. However, there is no mention of vaccination side effects or even vaccine damage in the analyses.

And it was analysed in which population groups the most “vaccine hesitants” were to be found. For example, the group of young men with a low level of education. Or single people, etc. These findings were then to be used to develop strategies “for more equitable vaccination coverage”. Whether this was actually pursued further cannot be determined from the information on the sciensano.be website.

In any case, the planners of EUVABECO are so enthusiastic about this overreaching tool that they are now considering testing it in four selected countries (see EUVABECO workflow) and then using it throughout the EU if possible.

The second purpose, the statistical evaluation – vaccination effectiveness, vaccination breakthroughs, side effects – is not so wrong and also worth knowing for vaccination critics. However, this is precisely the purpose that seems to be of less interest to EUVABECO. The website states under Workflow that it is about screening for vaccination motivation.

It is left to the imagination what could be done with the data obtained in this way. First of all, you can’t be sure that the system won’t be extended to all “recommended standard immunisations” without further ado. So that you are regularly bothered with vaccination invitations, preferably with an appointment. And what will the follow-up look like for those who permanently succumb to the misconception that these invitations are offers that can be declined?

Nothing has to – everything can. In any case, a Pandora’s box is being opened here.

What can be done?

Asking MEPs to oppose the WHO’s pandemic treaty and the amended IHR, as has already been suggested in this context, is a sensible thing to do in principle. However, this will not bring down the EUVABECO project.

Firstly, education in the field!
About what the flowery stories about “voluntary control over your own immunisation data” can actually mean. What possibilities both vaccination passports and motivational screening would open up for the authorities. Letters to the editor on relevant articles.

Secondly, resistance!
Do not be lulled into complacency. No voluntary participation in the vaccination card pilot project. Fill out questionnaires on your personal and health situation carefully and with a minimum of data.

Thirdly, educate decision-makers!

To work towards ensuring that the EVC is at least not made compulsory.

And that Germany refrains from screening the population across all data sets in order to be able to manipulate them all the more effectively afterwards.
In other words, it must be prevented that the project item “screening for vaccination motivation” is introduced in our country.

Direct contact with the author is possible via her open Telegram group t.me/imanfangwarcorona