At its coordinators’ meeting on Tuesday 25 October, the European Parliament’s Special Committee established to learn lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic (COVI) decided that its work needed more time. Its Chair, Kathleen Van Brempt (S&D, Belgian), announced that the committee would submit a request to the Conference of Presidents to adopt a decision extending the committee’s mandate by another three months.
The coordinators also decided that the committee secretariat would issue a second invitation to Mr Albert Bourla, CEO of the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, for a hearing in early 2023. MEPs had regretted that Mr Bourla had unilaterally cancelled his appearance at a committee hearing scheduled for 10 October (see EUROPE 13039/13).
Ms Van Brempt announced that the committee would submit a request to the European Commission for access to all documents related to the preliminary negotiations of the joint vaccine procurement, in particular the preliminary negotiations related to the third procurement contract with Pfizer and BioNTech.
Finally, the committee will write to the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, to formally ask the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, for full transparency on this vaccine purchase contract. (Original version in French by Émilie Vanderhulst)