Belgian Court Overturns Closure of Cinemas and Theatres
On Sunday the Belgian Government introduced new restrictions designed to stem the spread of the Omicron variant, forcing many public places and venues, such as cinemas and theatres, to close. However, Belgian’s highest administrative court has struck down the ban, claiming that the Government does not have the justification or legitimacy to designate these areas as “dangerous places for health… in that they would spread Covid”. It went on to describe the Government’s actions as “disproportionate”. MailOnline has more.
A Belgian court on Tuesday suspended the closure of concert halls, cinemas and other entertainment venues, a measure announced last week by Prime Minister Alexander De Croo to stem the spread of the Omicron Covid variant.
Under new restrictions that took effect Sunday, movie houses, concert halls and art centres were ordered to shut their doors. Some stayed open in protest.
But the Council of State, Belgium’s highest administrative court, said the authorities have not demonstrated “in what way entertainment venues are particularly dangerous places for (people’s) health… in that they would spread Covid, to the extent necessary to order their closure.”
The Government’s closure order was only announced last week and took effect from Sunday, with the court saying it was “disproportionate”.
It said in a ruling published on Tuesday that, even if the Omicron variant required further restrictions, the Government needed to show why a given measure was needed on public health grounds. The court still needs to make a final ruling.
The order came despite the assessment of the scientific committee advising the Government that going to such places poses no extra risk to public health.
It is not entirely clear what counts as a cultural venue, but it will not include cinemas and other indoor venues, such as for bowling, or night clubs.
The Council of State is an advisory body that has legal powers to overturn Government decisions it considers unlawful.
De Croo’s Government and regional chiefs decided last Wednesday to close cinemas and theatres and play sporting fixtures behind closed doors, while allowing bars, restaurants, gyms and other indoor sports venues to continue as before.
Belgium, home to European Union institutions and the headquarters of NATO, has seen Covid infections continually fall since a late November peak, but Omicron cases are rapidly rising, and now make up over half of all Covid cases.
The suspension of the order came after representatives of Belgian actors, performers and cinema operators launched an appeal against the decision.
The FEAS umbrella association for the sector said the lockdown was baseless, unfair and disproportionate and it, along with several cultural and rights groups, appealed to Belgium’s Council of State, which ruled in their favour.
After meeting on Tuesday with sector representatives, health minister Frank Vandenbroucke told state broadcaster RTBF that “there’s no possibility to immediately revise the (Government’s) decision”.
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I went to our local cinema to watch the latest Matrix film with my mrs last night. I thought it was very ironic how all the blue pill takers put their masks on at the end to leave!
I loved it when I saw the Matrix that half the people watching and working there couldn’t be arsed to wear masks.
Do you really have to get an invasive test or experimental medication to see these films now?
I really can’t get on with these matrix movies, i’ve tried watching them, but it just seems so, I dunno, immature, I don’t say that to be disrespectful to anyone, I just can’t take them seriously even for fiction. I only watched 15mins of resurrections before I turned it off.
Back in the day John Wayne with his 6 shooter would have a 6 for 6 body count, nowadays, everyone has automatic weapons with infinite rounds but can’t hit anything, & watching Keanu Reeves is like watching a corpse acting.
I’ve tried three bloody times to get into the Matrix films, and I just can’t get on with them. I know I’m missing something, but I’ll just have to accept that.
If you think Reeves is bad in The Matrix stuff, don’t ever watch him in the film version of The Taming of the Shrew. Denzel Washington did OK, if you could suspend disbelief as to a black character in his role, but then, he’s a different stratum from ol’ Keanu.
Every sector in every country should now be organising a litigation blitz (should have been done ages ago) and absolutely hammer their governments with legal action all at the same time, forcing them to prove their case for restrictions.
There will be plenty of back up now from the fed up public.
I think a bit of follow up on the 7726ing the NHSBooster spam texts would help too.
Could be right, but who’s going to pay for it?
Don’t think it’ll work here in UK anyway, the judiciary is captured by establishment liberals like the rest of the civil service.
A Stand In The Park (UK) is in serious talks about getting a fiver from everyone in the group – that would quickly raise some serious cash.
It doesn’t need much money.
You can sue another party for sending spam e-mails in the county court system, i.e. as a small claim. The court costs of a small claim aren’t much and both sides pay their own legal costs. No lawyers are needed.
What happened to the judicial review of the care workers mandate? That hit the courts then vanished as far as I can see?
The key feature of this judgment is the government being ‘held to account’ – i.e. having to establish proportionate grounds for action rather than just governing by fiat.
This is what has been missing in the entire shit-show across Europe. Public Health needs to be put back in an accountable box.
Big Brother Watch have launched their challenge of the Covid ID scheme, a few days before Christmas. I believe the same in Wales is ongoing. Watch this space…
https://twitter.com/bigbrotherwatch/status/1474324777754148888?s=21
This is not a dig
But this why I can’t do socialism, today’s progressive left authoritarians don’t do accountability any more than the crony capitalist Tories.
The entire system is irrevocably corrupt! The judiciary are captured, & police politicized, it is a totalitarian technocracy, there will be no rolling heads.
The world has changed since Eugene Debs my friend, socialists aren’t about the working class anymore. Liberals have infiltrated every major political party and public service, and socialisms obsession with equality is partly to blame.
My comment was totally free of any particular old-fashioned political inference. Your antiquated obsession with ‘socialism’ entirely misses the key aspects of what is going on throughout Europe – a continent which, incidentally, happens to be governed mainly by the traditional right of centre, just like Britain. The old definitions are irrelevant in this era of capitalist totalitarianism.
You couldn’t do it, could ya!
Europe is a pseudo socialist state run by leftist neoliberals, it can only exist through totalitarianism, globalism is corporate socialism, international communism, socialism can only survive via authoritarian regime. Censorship, mass surveillance, secret police, yes I can see what’s happening, it’s 1930s all over again, only this time no one is going to stand up against it.
The typical left right divide is more prominent now than ever before. I actually think that’s a good thing, the bad thing is the left are ahead.
Only Poland and Hungary’s governments could be called right of centre, all the rest are mainstream left, including our own.
Public Health is largely an oxymoron.
Health is Individual and harmed when poor lifestyles are subsidised by government schemes..
I hope in 3 months down the road if England didn’t go loco and the numbers look as they are looking like a fairly typical winter flu season, Sturgeon and Drakeford get their arses sued by the hospitality industry.
A government actually being asked to produce some hard evidence which will be closely scrutinized.
Now they are fucked.
Last night the wife and I went to a local restaurant, as it was an on the spot decision I called and asked if there was a table for 2 available. After a bit of umming as they said they were full, I said I was a regular (which I am) and got a table. Got to the restaurant and it was full, all of the waiters except 1 were not wearing face coverings. Most of the customers coming and going weren’t covered, except for the odd twat, one who put on a mask to go to the toilet then took it off when he sat down. There’s no cure for stupid, but good to see the majority in the normal world.
You mean you followed him in there?
No dickhead, I guess he went into the room labelled “toilet” to have a wank.
I am fed up with all sorts of “experts” announcing that we still don’t have enough data, especially when they told us at the start that they would know in three weeks after the first UK case. What they mean of course is that they don’t have the data they were hoping for.
Yet oddly, they don’t seem to mind a lack of data in relation to the vaccines
Our current situation has nothing to do with a virus and people on here should certainly understand that by now.
Jolly good. Now do the rest, Belgium!
Let’s hope it doesn’t end in chocolatiers.
I should cocoa!
It is the lack of efficacy, necessity and the sheer disproportionality of ALL of this shit that should see courts overrule governments all across Europe. But the bought courts won’t hear cases, and the bought human rights NGOs won’t bring them, and the bought media won’t question the inconsistent gibberish they are fed.
It is worth asking why there exists no comparable legal avenue in the UK.
Britain’s vaunted legal system has repeatedly shown itself to be essentially useless in fighting covid restrictions. The Government claims there is a public-health rationale to do whatever they want, eliminating any notion of individual rights, and effects a rubber-stamp Commons vote to back it up.
And there is nothing, legally, we can do about it.
The Government has no legal case to make. It does not have to prove that its measures are effective, or proportional to the risk involved. It does not have to clear any bar of cost-effectiveness. The number of businesses bankrupted, of educations ruined, of people driven to alcoholism, despair, loneliness, or suicide is irrelevant.
It is long-past time Britain enacted a written Constitution. One where our rights of freedom of expression and assembly are enshrined in written law. And where the Government has to clear a very high bar indeed before those rights are, in any way, infringed upon.
The legal avenue was pursued (Dolan case) but the courts decided it was a matter for the executive.
It is long-past time Britain enacted a written Constitution. Absolutely. Constitutions are not panaceas but, if written well, they establish one very important principle and that is that the people are sovereign and transfer power to the state under clear and specific conditions, the main ones being basic fundamental rights that cannot be taken away. In the UK, parliament is sovereign, not the people. Our rights can be overruled by a simple parliamentary majority, which is why, I think, judges have been powerless to uphold any basic rights. The moment parliament says everyone must be placed under house arrest, that’s it. That’s the law. Our system has worked ok so far because the establishment has generally tended not to abuse its power too much, at least until March 2020 when Britain followed every other western nation (except Sweden) in establishing totalitarian rule. This will never happen though. The people who have the power to create a constitution are precisely the people who hold power without a constitution, namely our MPs. And they will employ any manner of esoteric arguments to explain why Britain is different, doesn’t need a constitution, constitutions don’t work, etc.. And why would they give up that… Read more »
Shame our courts and regulators are deeply in the pockets of the powers that be. I’m sure others on this site will have had their response from IPSO about complaint/s made about hate-filled articles. The response to me being there was no grounds to complain.
What this response tells me is that the regulators are blind to hatred being poured on people who want to protect their own bodily autonomy. It tells me that if I’d said I am gay/black/a helicopter, they might have taking action. We’re deep in Weimer Republic territory.
That’s a very interesting answer – so they’re actually saying that groups of people are not protected based on e.g. their race, gender identity or religion ! So according to what IPSO writes here, it’s ‘allowed’ to discriminate against groups of e.g. unspecified trans-people…?? If it’s OK to say that the un-vaccinated as a group are stupid, and since the rules do not apply to groups of people, then it’s apparently OK to say that un-specified people belonging to a certain religion or race are stupid….(which I obviously don’t condone in any way, I’m just saying that the response you have received from IPSO is actually claiming this. It’s completely nonsensical!)
Pah! Restrictions in cinemas? Its nothing.
From 3 January in ‘prison state’ France it will be illegal ( yes the correct word) to drink water on a TGV from say Marseilles to Paris ( 3h 40m). Nothing, absolutely nothing can now merit removing a mask on any form of distance travel for any reason.
Me thinks madness has descended.
Didn’t it used to be a crime to (mendaciously) shout “fire” in the middle of a crowded theatre?
Judges that actually believe in justice. A shame that the UK’s judiciary does not follow suit.