Belgium should get rid of its Covid Safe Ticket (CST) in two weeks' time, according to leading socialist politician Paul Magnette.
The former politics professor turned party chief told Bel RTL radio that the government downgrading its pandemic response to code yellow at the start of March would be the trigger.
"The picture is much improved," he said. "There are fewer and fewer people hospitalised, and health services are under less pressure. With a bit of luck, we can turn yellow around the start of March, and with that, we can do without the CST."
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The former Wallonia president and mayor of Charleroi says the CST should only remain in use for foreign travel, depending on decisions taken by other countries.
"Lessons have to be learned here"
Magnette has changed his mind entirely on mandatory vaccination, which he said last summer was probably necessary. "It is not taboo," he said then.
Now, though, he says the idea of forcing everybody to take the jab is "no longer up for debate" – just as Belgium's Federal Parliament, which has been doing just that during hearings with experts for weeks, is due deliver its definitive position.
The change in tone should be echoed across the political spectrum, Magnette suggests. "We must not forget that for a very long time, more than two years, we were living under extremely severe restrictions on our freedoms."
"We closed our schools, our businesses, we took measures to restrict social contact that were very tough – the gravest public restrictions on freedoms we've known since World War II."
"That's not something we should see as anodyne – lessons have to be learned here."
"We have to be able to take certain measures when there is an imperative for public health – but these have to be strictly proportionate."
