On Thursday 15 October, the European Commission will present a communication to complement EU action on vaccines. In line with the June strategy, which allows the European Commission to pre-qualify doses of promising vaccine candidates on behalf of Member States, this document will provide guidance on how vaccinations can be organised (see EUROPE 12508/4).
This issue and, more generally, the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, will also feature on the agenda of the European summit on 15 and 16 October.
Some leaders want to talk about vaccine distribution, while others want to discuss Covid-19 tests, said a national diplomat.
The EU Council’s priorities regarding vaccines
The draft conclusions, as seen by EUROPE, welcome the work that has been carried out at European level on vaccine development and distribution. However, it reiterates the need to build up a sufficient stock in Europe and to there is a robust authorisation and monitoring procedure, as well as fair and affordable access to vaccines.
At this stage, the European Commission has already signed three advance purchase agreements with the pharmaceutical industry, namely with AstraZeneca, Sanofi-GSK and Johnson&Johnson, although the latter's clinical trials were om fact halted earlier this week “due to an unexplained illness contracted by one of the participants”.
Other coordination options
For the rest, the draft conclusions of the European Council underline the efforts that have already been made regarding coordination, while also making clear reference to the adoption earlier this week by the General Affairs Council of a recommendation on free movement (see EUROPE 12580/6). It emphasises the need, however, to go further; this is particularly regarding “monitoring of quarantine periods, cross-border tracing of people who have been in contact with a positive case, and a common evaluation of screening methods”.
The differences in approach between Member States are particularly striking with regard to the duration of quarantine periods (14 days in Italy, 10 days in Hungary and seven days in Belgium), as was noted in the latest minutes of the Health Security Committee meeting.
The coordination of national measures is an “absolutely essential” subject for some countries, such as Luxembourg, which hosts many cross-border workers, said one diplomatic source. The country also abstained on Tuesday during the adoption of the EU Council’s recommendation.
Luxembourg expects the European Council to call for further work to improve the offer on the table. Pointing out the infringements to the principles of free movement, it is of the opinion that it would be particularly penalised by its large-scale testing strategy, which condemns it to always being classified as red because of the infection detection rate.
Link to draft conclusions: https://bit.ly/33RcDWe (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)