If it is not one of the first rulings on the matter in Italy, we are close. Let’s talk about Covid, vaccination obligations and related sanctions, one of which has now been canceled by the TAR and destined to become jurisprudence. The act is 1100/2024 where “violations of the law” are underlined and above all “the unreasonableness of the compulsory treatment for those over 50 based only on age”, or a “personal condition referred to in art. 3 Constitution, without any other specific logical, scientific or prudential motivation, which could justify the vaccination obligation for this indistinct category of subjects and the related sanction imposed following failure to comply with this obligation”.
To understand the decision of the administrative court, we must go back to 5 January 2022 when the Council of Ministers – the Draghi government in office -, as a further measure against the increase in Covid infections and the arrival of the Omicron variant, had established that from 1 February “citizens over 50 who are not vaccinated or have not completed the cycle will receive a one-off fine of 100 euros”. The rule was then suspended by the current government with an extension until 30 June 2024. Therefore, until that day, all possible sanctions of 100 euros for ‘no vaxers’ were suspended. Despite this, however, a woman born in 1966 from Bologna still faced the bitter surprise “as on 15 June 2022 she had not started the primary vaccination cycle”. A payment request arrived from the Revenue Agency, immediately challenged by the lawyer Sebastiano Scardovi.
“First of all – explains the lawyer – we considered it unreasonable to ‘cut’ the population in half, before and after the age of 50. Then we asked ourselves what the functional competence of the Revenue Agency was. Finally, the processing of sensitive company data my client: why did the Ministry of Health transmit them to another body without consent?”. Questions that the first section of the TAR accepted. And in the reasons, among the “various violations of the law”, the focus is on the concept of obligation towards “an indistinct category of subjects based only on age”. Without a “specific and individual reason behind the prescribed obligation, where this vaccine intervened to prevent the disease but did not serve to prevent contagion”. The general principle is then called into question according to which ‘it is necessary to avoid direct or indirect discrimination against unvaccinated people, for example for medical reasons, (..) or because they have not yet had the opportunity to be vaccinated or have chosen not to be'”. In short, the TAR concludes, “the mandatory treatment for those over 50 is unreasonable”, without “other specific logical, scientific or prudential motivation”.
