On Wednesday 9 July, the European Commission adopted a communication detailing a strategy for medical countermeasures, the aim of which is “to boost collective resilience, preparedness and response to keep Europe and the world safe from health threats, irrespective and independently of the cause or origin of the health emergency”, according to the text (see EUROPE 13623/4).
Important initiatives include the ambition to make an EU-level wastewater sentinel system operational, collecting data on the circulation of pathogens from strategic sites such as airports.
In 2026, the European Commission and its partners will also launch a global wastewater sentinel system, as part of the Global Consortium for Wastewater and Environmental Surveillance (GLOWACON). This network will cover international airports and other strategic sites around the world in order to detect and monitor potential outbreaks on a global scale.
“These voluntary systems will use wastewater surveillance for early detection and tracking of outbreaks, supporting timely deployment of medical countermeasures”, the communication states.
Speaking to the press, European Commissioner for Equality; Preparedness and Crisis Management Hadja Lahbib stressed that “it all starts with knowledge of the threats we face and our ability to detect them at an early stage”. This European wastewater sentinel system will function “like an early warning radar, detecting infectious diseases before symptoms appear”, giving us precious time to act, she added.
She also announced that the Commission would be doubling its support for dynamic SMEs and start-ups, increasing HERA Invest to €200 million by 2027.
Other measures include:
- developing ‘roadmaps’ for preparing medical countermeasures when confronted with specific health emergency scenarios (by 2026);
- creating a European list of medical countermeasures for priority threats (2026).
The Commission will also create RAMP UP, or ‘the Rapid Agile Manufacturing Partnership for Union Protection’, a voluntary network of EU-based pharmaceutical manufacturers, innovators and suppliers. This partnership will form a rapid-response industrial force, designed to protect citizens in times of crisis.
In addition, the Commission will seek to identify possible vulnerabilities in the supply chains of medical countermeasures not covered by the EU list of critical medicines, such as personal protective equipment, diagnostics devices and countermeasures against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) threats.
Finally, the Commission will rely on the EU FAB model, which guarantees a production capacity that can be mobilised at any time to manufacture up to 325 million doses of vaccine, and activated rapidly in the event of an emergency to produce the vaccines needed for the EU. It plans to broaden EU FAB’s scope to cover a wider range of products and also include the readiness phase, thereby meeting both civilian and military needs and supporting innovative production models.
Link to the communication: https://aeur.eu/f/hrp
Link to annexes: https://aeur.eu/f/hrq (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)