Negotiators from the European Parliament and the Council of the EU met, late on Thursday 18 November, for a first interinstitutional meeting (‘trilogue’) on the draft regulation on the management of transboundary health threats.
This brief initial contact enabled the two institutions to identify the differences and synergies between their two negotiating mandates.
The EU Council had already adopted its own in July (see EUROPE 12758/20). The Parliament, for its part, asked to review its initial position before the trilogues began and last week adopted a revised mandate (see EUROPE 12829/22) to take account of the European Commission's new prerogatives in health crisis management.
Among the points that are likely to be difficult to negotiate is the question of the audits that the ECDC will have to carry out in the Member States in order to verify the state of implementation of the national crisis preparedness and response plans and their consistency with the EU plan in this area.
The Commission suggested that these audits should be carried out every three years, the Parliament recommends two years and the EU Council four. Discussions will also be necessary to agree on the measures to be put in place in the event of deficiencies in the national plans identified in the audits.
Discussions are also expected on the role of the ECDC, the arrangements for group purchasing of medical countermeasures and the governance of the various bodies and commissions involved, an institutional source confirmed to EUROPE.
It should be less complicated, however, to find common ground on the “One Health” approach defended by both institutions, on international cooperation, on data protection and on the coherence between this text and the tasks of the new European Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority, HERA (see EUROPE 12792/24).
According to our information, four technical trilogues are already scheduled before the end of the year. However, no date has yet been set for the next political trilogue.
This draft regulation is the last of the three texts making up the “One Health” legislative package to enter the interinstitutional negotiation phase (see EUROPE 12821/19, EUROPE 12822/1). (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)