What did the CJEU rule?

The Court of Justice of the European Union held Thursday that an Italian army officer's refusal of a mandatory Covid-19 vaccine amounts to a policy disagreement. It is not a protected religious or philosophical belief under EU employment discrimination law.

In BG v Ministero della Difesa, judges in Luxembourg answered questions referred by Italy's Council of State. The applicant, a senior officer in Italy's Army Engineer Corps, was suspended without pay in January 2022 after declining the vaccination Italy had required for military personnel. He has a wife and two minor daughters.

What did the officer contend?

He argued the mandate targeted soldiers while exempting civilian employees working alongside them. He further submitted that regular Covid testing should have been accepted as an alternative safeguard. In his view, his refusal reflected a protected belief.

The court disagreed. The applicant, the judges wrote, "does not seek to oppose the compulsory vaccination at issue in the main proceedings on the basis of his own beliefs, but to challenge, as such, the choices made by the Italian authorities in the field of public health."

How did the judges reason?

EU employment discrimination law protects religion and certain philosophical or spiritual convictions. It does not protect opinions on policy. The court characterised BG's submissions on vaccine effectiveness, side effects, alternative testing and the mandate's implementation as "opinions — which in the present case relate to public health — the protection of which … is not governed by the provisions of that directive."

The judges also rejected the comparison between military and civilian staff. The directive covers religion, disability, age and sexual orientation, not membership of a particular professional category. Soldiers and civilian employees fall under different legal regimes.

What does the ruling change for practitioners?

The judgment narrows the route by which employees can convert objections to vaccine mandates into discrimination claims under EU law. It signals that broad conscience objections will not easily translate into protected beliefs. Litigation elsewhere, including challenges to climate commitments, ethical veganism and animal-testing policies, may now test where the court has actually drawn the line.

Where do scholars see the significance?

Paolo Vargiu, associate professor of law at the University of Leicester, said the judgment concerns less Covid-19 vaccination than the legal status of conscience under EU law. "The court has not given governments a blank cheque to impose medical requirements," Vargiu said. The judges drew, he added, "a hard boundary around EU antidiscrimination law."

A sincere objection does not automatically become a protected belief. The court left open where the line falls between a protected belief and "merely an opinion, objection or challenge to policy." If every conscientious refusal could be recast as discrimination, Vargiu warned, EU equality law would become "a general forum for every act of conscientious refusal." The broader message, he said, is that conscience matters, but "EU law does not protect conscience as such."

Dagmar Schiek, professor of EU and labour law at University College Dublin, said the outcome was largely predictable. EU judges have long distinguished between protected beliefs and disagreements with government policy. Some comprehensive philosophical worldviews may receive treatment comparable to religion. Objections to a specific public health measure usually do not.

Lucy Vickers, an employment and equality law specialist at Oxford Brookes University, said BG's argument rested on scientific claims about vaccine effectiveness and alternative public health measures rather than on a protected religious, philosophical or spiritual belief. Future disputes, she said, could involve objections rooted in broader ethical or religious convictions, including concerns about animal testing. "If such beliefs are protected," she said, courts may then have to decide whether public health concerns are strong enough to justify limiting them.

What happens next?

The ruling cannot be appealed. The case returns to Italy. Italy's Constitutional Court has already upheld similar vaccine mandates for healthcare workers. Italy added military personnel to its Covid vaccination requirements in late 2021. Soldiers who refused vaccination kept their employment relationship but stayed suspended from duty without pay until they complied or the measure expired.

Neither BG's lawyer nor the Italian Ministry of Defence responded to requests for comment.