On Tuesday 16 March, the European Health Ministers exchanged views on the Covid-19 pandemic and on the major issues within their competence, including health technology assessment, proposals for a Health Union and the cancer plan, citing the need for coordination.
On the Covid-19 pandemic, Member States took stock of the problems faced by AstraZeneca and agreed to follow the opinion of the European Medicines Agency, to be published on Thursday (see other news).
At the press briefing following the meeting, Commissioner Stella Kyriakides stressed that “every dose of vaccine counts”. There are indeed “uneven variations in terms of vaccine deployment”, she says. “This needs to evolve in a more coordinated way, as it is important that we do not fall behind as deliveries increase”.
On the draft regulation on health technology assessments, the Portuguese Presidency of the EU Council regretted that it was not possible to get support on 19 February and pledged to try again on 19 March, at the meeting of the Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Working Group (see EUROPE 12661/5).
According to the Portuguese Health Minister, Marta Temido, the main difficulty today is more political than technical. It concerns Article 6B of the Regulation and relates to the way in which the coordination group decides, by consensus or by qualified majority. As usual, the Member States have not spoken publicly about this secret issue.
Finally, the Ministers discussed the proposals for a Health Union (see EUROPE 12650/1). The only speaker was German Health Minister Jens Spahn, who called for the strengthening of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA). He expressed his wish to reach a position of the Parliament and the EU Council “before the summer”, in order to be able to start the trilogues “by the end of the year”.
In the morning, the head of the ECDC appeared before Parliament’s Environment Committee to talk about the centre’s work in 2020 and the lack of resources it had faced. “We have managed to complete 60% of the planned non-Covid work and 90% of the planned Covid work”, said Andrea Ammon, adding that the number of visits to the centre’s website and media enquiries had never been so high. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)