For the second time in two months, the cabinet has asked the House of Representatives to postpone the consideration of the 2G bill. Just like at the beginning of December, there is still insufficient political support in parliament for 2G, a form of the corona admission ticket in which only vaccinated or cured people still have access and people with a negative test are not. The new postponement can also very well mean a cancellation, because many parties in the House prefer to see the cabinet withdraw the proposal completely.
Minister of Health Ernst Kuipers (D66) does not want to go that far yet. In a letter to the House of Representatives, he writes on Tuesday that he wants to further investigate “in which specific circumstances a corona ticket based on 2G can be used, so that it can be a proportional measure”. Kuipers also said earlier that he thinks it is “too early” to say “that the (2G) corona admission ticket can go in the trash.”
Tu Delft
In the letter to parliament, Kuipers acknowledges that the introduction of 2G would not be very effective at the current high level of contamination. A group of researchers led by TU Delft recently concluded in a detailed report that the effect of 2G is currently ‘very limited’, partly because vaccinated people can still easily contract and spread the Omikron variant. Kuipers writes to the House that TU research “shows that in the current epidemiological situation the difference between the effectiveness of 2G and 3G is so small that there is no need for a rapid introduction.”
Also read: With new critical research, political support for controversial 2G seems even further away
Kuipers now hopes that the House of Representatives will await new research into the effectiveness of 2G and possibly consider the bill at a later date. The question is whether the cabinet will be given that space, because on Tuesday afternoon the House will vote on a motion by the SGP and MP Pieter Omtzigt, calling for the 2G law to be repealed. this motion would according to the AD could obtain a majority, because the coalition party ChristenUnie and GroenLinks would also support him. The cabinet is not required to implement such a motion, but if the motion is adopted, it is an important signal that the introduction of 2G is virtually certain from a political point of view.
ChristianUnion
While the cabinet would like to keep the corona ticket on hand for future waves, the call is getting louder in the House to abolish the corona pass altogether. In the corona debate, ChristenUnie leader Gert-Jan Segers called the pass – also with 3G – “not proportional in a new, endemic phase around corona”. When the corona pass was introduced, the previous cabinet promised that the measure would be withdrawn as soon as possible, but did not keep that promise. In a number of other European countries, including the United Kingdom and Denmark, the corona pass has been or will be abolished.
The government does not consider abolition for the Netherlands to be an issue yet. Kuipers writes to the House that he “wants to regularly update the model of the corona admission ticket to do justice to the development of the epidemic”.