On 23 November, the Member States’ deputy ambassadors to the EU discussed a note from the Czech Presidency of the Council of the European Union ahead of the meeting of health ministers on 9 December.
The Presidency recalls the central role of the European Commission in the joint procurement of Covid-19 vaccines. It also reiterates the dissatisfaction of 10 Member States (Poland, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia) expressed in a letter to the Commission before the Health Council meeting of 14 June 2022 about a surplus of vaccines.
Amendments to the Moderna and PfizerBioNTech contracts have enabled vaccine deliveries to be rescheduled (see EUROPE 12952/24, 12964/24). This did not fully satisfy the above-mentioned States.
Meetings have been held between the vaccines Joint Negotiation Team, HERA, the Czech Presidency and representatives of Moderna and PfizerBioNTech.
Seven scenarios were presented to the pharmaceutical companies, ranging from aligning the number of doses delivered with the pandemic waves to cancelling advance purchase agreements.
Recently, the proposal for a centralised storage solution at European level was welcomed by seven Member States. An agreement for centralised storage has been reached with PfizerBioNTech (see EUROPE 13060/20).
For the Czech Presidency, the issue of surplus doses remains unresolved. The 10 States mentioned above have again expressed their dissatisfaction.
The Czech Republic, while stressing the need for States to maintain a united and supportive approach to the issue, considered it important to hear the States’ positions on two points: their expectations of the European Commission’s next steps acting on their behalf in the context of existing advance purchase agreements for vaccines, and whether they felt that at this stage of the pandemic a return to national public procurement procedures could be considered as an alternative to joint procurement at European level.
Link: https://aeur.eu/f/49u (Original version in French by Emilie Vanderhulst)