The Heads of State or Government did not dwell on the health issue this Thursday 21 October. They quickly concluded their round table discussion on the subject and adopted a series of conclusions, broadly similar to those detailed in our columns the day before (see EUROPE 12816/5).
Only the first point, on the epidemiological situation and the progress of vaccination in the EU, was slightly expanded.
“The situation in some Member States remains very serious”, the leaders noted, calling for greater efforts to overcome vaccine hesitancy, “including by tackling disinformation, notably on social media platforms”.
Slovak Prime Minister Eduard Heger raised this issue on his arrival at the summit. Pointing out that Slovakia had one of the lowest vaccination rates in Europe, he said that “hoaxes on social networks” were “a big problem” in this regard and called for “communication with website owners”.
The leaders also discussed longer-term measures to be taken to be better equipped to deal with health emergencies. In particular, they called for the adoption of the legislative package for a Health Union (see EUROPE 12600/24).
The interinstitutional negotiations on the regulation on the European Medicines Agency are expected to be concluded next Thursday (see EUROPE 12802/20). Discussions on the mandate of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) will continue on Wednesday 27 October. According to our information, the co-legislators are still not ready to negotiate the regulation on cross-border threats (see EUROPE 12805/18).
See the conclusions adopted: https://bit.ly/3B6Abnv (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)