Members of the European Parliament’s development committee on Thursday 4 February called on the EU to do its utmost to ensure fair access to affordable Covid-19 vaccines for low-income non-Member States, particularly in Africa, as it had promised.
Indeed, almost all political groups considered solidarity with developing countries to be a priority, in an exchange with the Commissioner for International Partnerships, Jutta Urpilainen. Several MEPs called for EU support for building productive capacity in developing countries.
This debate took place in the wake of the publication of the first provisional distribution forecast for the Covax Facility—a key step in achieving equitable global access to vaccines.
The Commissioner highlighted the role played by the EU in the creation of Covax, with ‘Team Europe’ (the EU, its Member States and financial institutions) being among the largest contributors with over €850 million, which will provide 1.3 billion doses of vaccines for 92 low- and middle-income countries by the end of the year. She was pleased that Covax is ready to begin delivering the first doses of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine to 18 countries, including 12 low-income countries, mostly in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
“We are waiting for WHO approval so that the AstraZeneca vaccine will be available in a few weeks, in massive quantities, and that the 92 countries concerned will be able to access it through Covax in the first half of 2021”, Ms Urpilainen added.
She said she had a meeting this week with WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Considering it “crucial to support neighbourhood countries, particularly in Africa” by focusing on healthcare workers, she welcomed European leaders’ commitment to a sharing mechanism “that will allow us to share part of the vaccines produced according to our purchase contracts”. Discussions with Member States and Covax are continuing on how to proceed rapidly.
She also made a point of noting that it was the Commission that organised the marathon of commitments last year to obtain €15.9 billion to develop and deploy vaccines, tests and treatments through the ACT-A (ACT Accelerator) initiative.
Ms Urpilainen said the Commission’s work to help build local production capacity in South Africa is ongoing, “with Germany”.
For Hildegard Bentele (EPP, Germany), the Covax mechanism is “far from being a success in poor countries, because there is no clear timetable, no deliveries”. In addition, the African Union has had to buy hundreds of millions of euros at far too high a price for the first tranche of the Pfizer BioNTtech vaccine. “I don’t see solidarity at all, I see a problem of competition with the US export ban, with the EU’s export control mechanism”, she said.
Russia, China and India are the only countries in a position to deliver these vaccines. The EU is losing this race, she lamented, also denouncing “moral issues”.
Compulsory licences? According to Udo Bullmann (S&D, Germany), the EU should “force vaccine producers to make a serious effort to supply the countries of the South”, even if this means using compulsory licences. Michèle Rivasi (Greens/EFA, France) argued for the EU to support compulsory licencing at the WTO—the only solution, she said, to “to leave charity behind” and give autonomy to countries like South Africa and India.
With the WTO, this will take time, the Commissioner said, assuring them that “in all contracts, we have ensured that sharing of vaccines is allowed”.
Bernhard Zimniok (ID, Germany) denounced a failure by the EU. “The most important problem is to vaccinate the whole world. This is where the problem starts: we have nothing to distribute! We have a vaccine that doesn’t even cover mutations. Where do we start?”, he said, accusing the Commission of “dilettantism” and advocating “thinking of the EU first”.
In November 2020, the Vaccine Alliance (GAVI) told MEPs that it plans to provide the 92 countries concerned with 2 billion doses of safe and effective vaccines by 2021.
See the GAVI report on vaccine distribution through the Covax Facility: https://bit.ly/36K5aJP (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)