At the Agriculture Council in Luxembourg on Monday 21 October, France and Spain called for a coordinated approach at EU level to anticipate vaccine needs and work to improve the availability (regarding quantity and delay) of vaccines in the animal health sector.
Luis Planas, the Spanish Minister for Agriculture, has also called for measures to ensure that the EU has sufficient stocks of vaccines to combat animal diseases.
The French delegation called for a sufficient volume of vaccines (antigen banks) as well as a coordinated European approach to improve their availability. France has asked for the agricultural crisis reserve to be mobilised in order to help farmers combat bluetongue disease, and has also insisted on ‘mirror clauses’ (provisions that make access to the EU market conditional upon compliance with certain key European production standards in terms of the environment, health or animal welfare) in relation to imported agricultural products.
Reciprocity of standards with regard to trade was cited by other countries, while Denmark criticised the negative effects of ‘mirror clauses’.
Italy supported the Franco-Spanish request for vaccinations, as did Finland, Ireland, Belgium, Portugal, Slovenia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Austria, among others.
Croatia and other countries such as Romania, Latvia, Belgium and Bulgaria have expressed their regret at lower EU cofinancing rates available for measures to combat epizootic diseases.
Link to the Franco-Spanish document: https://aeur.eu/f/dyz (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)