Debate: European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control - Serious cross-border threats to health
Date: MONDAY, 13 SEPTEMBER 2021
Speaker: Stella Kyriakides
Language: EN

The COVID—19 pandemic has now been part of our lives – and is still part of our lives – for the last 18 months, and we are continuing to fight what all of us call an unprecedented health threat. Throughout these 18—19 months, we have learnt, and are learning, a great deal. Perhaps what we have learned – and this is one of the clearest messages that I also heard Véronique say – is that the European Union works and does better when we are stronger together, when there is collaboration. We’ve learnt a great deal and we now have a European vaccine strategy that has resulted in about 72 percent of the adult population of the EU being fully vaccinated. We now know that all the approved vaccines protect against the COVID variants that we have so far, they save lives and they protect against serious disease. But perhaps the clearest message that we have received, and that we are all looking at and discussing here today, is that the European Union needs to be better prepared for future health emergencies and to deliver a post-COVID recovery that makes Europe healthier, more inclusive, more resilient and more sustainable. We need to take bold action across the board, and this action includes building a strong European Health Union. To do that, we have three key proposals: the proposal to strengthen the European Medicines Agency, which we discussed early in July, along with the two proposals I want to discuss with you now. One seeks to reinforce the mandate of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the other proposes a regulation on serious cross-border threats to health. These proposals will be complemented by the European Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA), which will be presented this week. This adds to the importance and the urgency of a swift political agreement on these files. The current pandemic has shown us that we need a stronger ECDC as it has to deal with the lack of access to crucial data and limited capacities to respond to this large—scale outbreak. The progress on the ECDC proposal in Parliament is taking us in the right direction, and I really want to thank you for your active engagement. Your amendments retain the level of ambition of the original proposal and do not mark significant departure from its policy objectives, a level of ambition that I have often stood here and said I totally share. However, we believe that some of the amendments need to be – or should be – reconsidered, especially as regards extending the ECDC’s mandate to cover non-communicable diseases, and this is for two reasons. Firstly, this might lead to duplication with work carried out in Member States and increase the burden on their already limited resources. Secondly, it would substantially stretch resources within the Agency, therefore weakening its focus rather than strengthening it. I would, however, say here that, looking at your amendments, I will look into your proposal for audits every two years and also look into the possibility of the yearly reporting of Member States. The pandemic has shown us that collaboration is vital. In response, the new regulation on cross-border health threats would give the EU a more comprehensive set of tools and enable it to better support Member States in facing such threats. It would introduce an audit process for preparedness and response planning to address existing shortcomings. The proposal gives a stronger legislation that we need to act together, rather than in national silos. To respond to emergencies as a team, we need to work as a team to prepare for them, and that is the purpose of the EU preparedness plan. The Health Security Committee (HSC) has played an enormous role in this pandemic, and a stronger committee would support a common EU response and improve our risk communication. Lastly, the new advisory committee is another crucial component, offering independent advice to make for evidence-based agile responses to health threats. I am very pleased that the Parliament’s amendments preserve the EU health security framework that has been envisioned, and this brings us a step closer to a healthier future for our citizens. I have often referred to the European Health Union package as ambitious with good reason. I believe in this. I believe that all of us who have been working together throughout these last 18 months know how important this is, and we know that this pandemic has given us an opportunity. This is an opportunity that we can make things different and better for European citizens in the area of health. The proposals of the ECDC and cross-border health threats are central to realising our ambition and emerging from this pandemic stronger, emerging wiser, emerging more resilient and emerging better prepared. So I welcome all the work on these proposals, I thank you for your efforts to reach agreement on them, and I am confident that in the fruitful autumn trilogues, we can have an agreement before the end of the year. With your support and all of us working together, we can translate these two proposals into concrete and long—lasting protection for our citizens against health crises.