Debate: Preparation of an EU Strategy on COVID- vaccination, including its external dimension
Date: WEDNESDAY, 16 DECEMBER 2020
Speaker: Margaritis Schinas
Language: EN

Yet the prospect of a COVID—19 vaccine provides some light at the end of the tunnel. Allow me to stress once again the three golden principles that are guiding the Commission’s work in this field, namely equal access, affordability and safety. In recent months, the Commission has been negotiating intensively to build a diversified portfolio of vaccines at fair prices and is working at full speed to review their safety and make them available.  As you know, in Europe the decision on the authorisation of these vaccines is not in the hands of politicians nor the hands of institutions, but in the hands of independent regulatory agencies, in our case the European Medicines Agency (EMA). As I think you know by now, we are aiming to authorise the Pfizer—BioNTech vaccine by the end of the year. The EMA has already announced its intention to provide for an authorisation next Monday. If this is the case, the Commission is ready to provide the formal authorisation and placing on the market in supersonic fast procedures. In two days we can do the formal authorisation that normally, for this type of authorisation for placing on the market, can take two months. This means that this vaccine will be the Christmas gift for all Europeans if everything goes well. We also know that, before mid—January, we will also have an opinion from EMA on the other vaccine by Moderna. EMA is also now currently conducting rolling reviews on the vaccines produced by AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson. Once authorised, we will secure access to these vaccines for all EU citizens at the same time. But, for this to happen, Member States need to have all preparations in place and activate their national vaccination plans. We already provided guidance in October in that respect and this is being done in a coordinated manner. All our Member States are making great efforts to put in place robust vaccination plans. These include identification of priority groups to be vaccinated first, ensuring solid supply chains, logistics and infrastructure, training staff or developing electronic vaccination registries. There is still much to do and certainly many challenges to overcome, but the Commission stands ready and committed to help.  We are also providing support to Member States on communication around COVID—19 vaccines. As someone who fought against the virus, not only as a Member of the College, but also from a hospital bed, I wish to say that nobody should underestimate or negate the threat we are facing nor the usefulness of the vaccines. It is important that our citizens understand that we have not cut corners on safety and the vaccines do not pose a risk. Europe will only authorise vaccines for our citizens under the sole condition that they are safe. Building trust is of course key to ensure a high vaccination uptake and everybody knows by now that this is, and should be, our collective priority, because at the end of the day vaccines in themselves do not save lives. Vaccination does.  We must also remember that the European Union has a duty to the world. We know that no one is safe until everyone is safe and that is why we aim to ensure universal and equitable access not only to vaccines, but also to diagnostics and therapeutics for all, including the most vulnerable populations living in the poorest and most fragile countries. No one should and no one will be left behind. Europe has been leading the international solidarity efforts to establish the COVAX Facility. Team Europe, our institutions and our Member States, is now the largest contributor to COVAX to purchase and deliver vaccines to low-income countries as part of a collective objective to buy two billion vaccine doses by the end of next year. The European Union is deeply and firmly committed to multilateralism and joint coordination with multilateral institutions.  We are the European Union and in our values we are guided by the principles of solidarity and unity of purpose. As such, we will donate under the Team Europe approach – we and our Member States – a proportion of our vaccines to our Western Balkan partners in our neighbourhood, as well as for humanitarian assistance and to frontline health workers in the poorest countries. This is a temporary solution to bridge the time gap until vaccines from COVAX are broadly available and we are currently working on a methodology to make this happen.  We will also ensure – and I know that this is an issue of interest to many of you – that intellectual property rights are not an obstacle to universal access to vaccines, including in developing countries that have no production capacity or have limited financial resources. Last but not least, as the European Union, we need to advance rapidly on getting our own European health union off the ground. Several proposals are already on the table. Others will follow. I am grateful to this House for your consistent support for all these initiatives from the Commission.  I wish to emphasise the importance of remaining vigilant. Whilst we advance our work on vaccines – and we are now getting to the later stage – it is essential to keep reducing transmission of the virus through effective testing, contact tracing and isolation until the immediate danger is behind us. Responsibility, both collective and individual, remains essential to get our lives and businesses restarted, but also to reduce the pressure on our heroic healthcare workers, whose immense efforts in the last months need to be not only acknowledged, but compensated. Our European way of life has been severely tested in these eight months, but it did not collapse. It resisted. Our resilient societies, our resilient health systems and the universality of our schools and education proved that, although we are tested we can manage, and we did manage because we are in this together.