The European Court of Human Rights has sided with the Czech Republic’s compulsory vaccination law after it was challenged by a number of parents who argued that the state requirements violated their right to privacy.
The case had been brought forward by the families after their children were denied entry to preschool because they were not fully vaccinated against “poliomyelitis, hepatitis B, tetanus, measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, whooping cough and pneumococcal infections,” EuroNews reported.
The BBC noted that under Czech law, parents are legally obligated to vaccinate their children unless they have a medical exemption. They add that “the jabs cannot be forcibly given and unvaccinated children cannot be excluded on this basis once they reach primary school age.”
On Thursday, 16 out of the 17 ECHR judges determined that mandatory vaccines could be considered “necessary” to democracy and that the state was well within its bounds to require vaccination.
“The measures could be regarded as being necessary in a democratic society,” the court wrote, according to EuroNews, and that the government had not “exceeded their wide margin of appreciation in this area.”
