The European Parliament’s Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) discussed on Thursday 22 April the draft report by Véronique Trillet-Lenoir (Renew Europe, France) on a proposal for a regulation on “serious cross-border health threats”.
This text, presented last November by the European Commission, is one of the new tools (see EUROPE 12600/24) that the EU should acquire to improve its capacity to manage health crises.
Believing that “several fundamental aspects of the legislative proposal should be strengthened”, the MEP drafted around 100 amendments.
In particular, she calls for the scope of this future regulation to be extended beyond communicable diseases. “The EU must be prepared to deal with a new pandemic, but also, for example, with an environmental or chemical threat”, says Ms Trillet-Lenoir.
While the Commission states that cross-border threats other than communicable diseases do not necessarily require surveillance at EU level, the draft report suggests that the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) should be allowed to “monitor the incidence of communicable and non-communicable diseases in coordination with existing tools”.
Data. The MEP also suggests that the ECDC should extend its communication activities to the general public. In this regard, she proposes to add an item to the effect that an online portal, managed by the ECDC, should be created “to share verified information”.
It would also be “appropriate”, according to the MEP, to provide support to Member States to ensure data collection in times of health crisis.
“Access to comparable data has been particularly difficult” during the Covid-19 pandemic, she notes.
Medicines. On the joint procurement procedure for medical countermeasures, Ms Trillet-Lenoir said she “fully supports” its generalisation. However, in the recitals, she proposes that a distinction can be made between “an accelerated procedure in times of crisis and a more permanent and predictable procedure over time”.
By suggesting a slight amendment to Article 20, she also intends to ensure that the European Medicines Agency is given a role very similar to that of other European agencies (ECDC, Food Safety Authority, Chemicals Authority, etc.) in health risk assessment.
“The EMA’s responsibilities in the area of marketing authorisation of countermeasures, continuous risk assessment of medicines and management of shortages would make it a full-fledged agency”, she summarises.
Governance. The MEP also calls for a stronger role for the European Parliament in the Health Security Committee.
For more transparency, it would be “judicious”, according to her, to give MEPs a role as observers in this committee “as well as to grant a significant role to representatives of society in the advisory committee, provided, of course, that there are no conflicts of interest”.
Finally, Ms Trillet-Lenoir’s draft report puts a little more emphasis on international cooperation, which she sees as a “powerful lever for all European actions in the field of prevention”.
To consult the project: https://bit.ly/3xdSw1c (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)