The Special Session of the World Health Assembly opened on Monday 29 November in Geneva, marking the start of an intergovernmental process to negotiate a Convention, agreement or other international instrument on pandemic preparedness and response.
Although the EU hopes to negotiate a legally binding treaty, it is not certain that the future agreement or instrument will be binding, as the informal green light given by diplomats on Sunday to a draft resolution still mentions these options (see EUROPE 12840/3).
As the international community reacts in a piecemeal fashion to the emergence of the ‘Omicron’ variant of SARS-CoV-2, the severity and impact of which the World Health Organization (WHO) says will not be known for several weeks, the WHO Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the variant should sound the alarm. “It will happen again, unless you, the nations of the world, can come together to say with one voice: never again!”, he warned.
As early as April 2020, the EU and WHO had been banking on vaccines as ‘THE’ solution to defeat the mutating coronavirus (see EUROPE 12474/7).
“Together with Dr Tedros, we have proposed an International Treaty on Pandemics rooted in the WTO constitution”, said the European Council President, Charles Michel, in an attempt to convince countries that do not want any overlap with the WHO. He went further, reiterating the EU’s preference for a binding instrument.
“It is our collective responsibility to never let another pandemic find us unprepared, uncoordinated or working in isolation from one another. The outcome of this session - and your decisions today - are vital to how we will cooperate in the future and how we will prevent, prepare for, detect and respond to health threats in the future. As you know, I have been a strong advocate for an international treaty or legally binding instrument on pandemic preparedness”, he said.
Mr Michel had, in fact, strongly promoted this idea back at the Global Health Summit in Rome in May 2021. While the principles agreed at the time laid the groundwork for enhanced international cooperation to overcome the Covid-19 crisis and improve preparedness for future pandemics, the Rome Declaration did not speak of a Pandemic Treaty (see EUROPE 12724/5).
“Let’s be better prepared against future pandemics. I welcome the start of negotiations for a global agreement on prevention, preparedness and response”, said the European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen. She recalled that she also supports “a new financial intermediary fund for global health security”.
Such a financing mechanism for pandemic prevention, preparedness and response could not be agreed upon at the G20 summit (see EUROPE 12824/6). (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)