Negotiators from the European Parliament and the Council of the EU met late on Wednesday 27 October for their second inter-institutional (‘trilogue’) political meeting on the proposed revision of the mandate of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).
The text currently being negotiated (see EUROPE 12797/18) - which aims to better equip the ECDC to deal with health crises - is however still the source of many disagreements between the two institutions and will require more meetings to reach a compromise.
According to a note drafted by the Council Presidency for this second trilogue, five main points, covering a total of some 30 amendments suggested by the Parliament, remain problematic.
In order to have more room for manoeuvre on these delicate issues, the Council Presidency has obtained the right to continue negotiations on behalf of the EU-27 on the basis of a revised EU Council mandate.
The first point of the Parliament’s proposal that the EU Council found problematic was to extend the future mandate of the ECDC to include non-communicable diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes and mental illness.
On this point, the EU Council, under its revised proposal, would propose the addition of a recital recognising the impact of major epidemics on health systems as well as on the increase of mental health problems in society.
In addition, it could suggest adding a clause allowing for a possible extension of the mandate to be considered at the next review of the text.
The second problematic point concerns the relationship between the ECDC and the Member States, with “the Council preferring a supportive role, and the Parliament preferring a more supervisory and prescriptive role”, the note says.
On this point, the EU Council is likely to be somewhat less flexible and refuse, for example, to allow the Centre to assess and monitor national plans for health crisis preparedness and response.
Discussions are also expected on data reporting, “with the Parliament favouring common indicators and standardized data collection, and the Council favouring the reporting of available data”.
The other two points still open at this stage concern the planning role of the ECDC and the addition of new tasks which the EU Council fears will duplicate those of other EU bodies.
It should be noted that the five technical meetings held so far have, however, resulted in provisional compromises on much of the text.
For example, Articles 22 to 25 on the financing of the Centre and Article 5.5 on the designation of a coordinator and a national contact point in each Member State to interact with the ECDC have been agreed at this stage.
The aim remains to reach a final agreement by the end of the Slovenian Council Presidency term at the end of December. (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)