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Health Union: Stronger EU response to public health emergencies

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With 542 votes for, 43 against and nine abstentions, MEPs approved the agreement reached with the Council to extend the mandate of European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. This legislation will strengthen the EU's ability to prevent, prepare for, and manage communicable disease outbreaks.

To ensure that their activities complement and are consistent, the ECDC will work with the European Commission and national authorities. The Centre will coordinate standardisation and validation of data and data dissemination at EU level. This will ensure timely and comparable data.

The ECDC will also closely monitor the ability of national health systems detect, prevent, respond and recover from communicable diseases outbreaks, identify gaps, and make science-based recommendations.

Response planning, prevention and preparedness

With 544 votes for, 50 against, and 10 abstentions from Parliament, also approved the agreement on several measures that will enable the EU to better respond to cross-border serious health threats.

These new rules will improve planning, preparation and response planning at both the EU and national level. The Commission will be able recognize a public health emergency at EU-level. This would allow for stronger intra-EU cooperation as well as the development and stockpiling medical countermeasures.

This legislation clarifies how to jointly procure medicines and medical devices. It also allows for negotiation and parallel procurement restrictions by countries.

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Joanna Kopcinska, rapporteur (ECR) stated: "The ECDC is expected to make recommendations to strengthen health systems and play a role for the development of indicators of health that will help manage and respond to transmissible diseases threats and related public-health issues. The Centre will have the ability to provide independent and robust scientific expertise as well as support actions to prevent, prepare and respond to cross-border health threats.

Rapporteur Veronique Troillet-Lenoir (Renew FR): "This legislation clearly responds the 74% European citizens who desire greater European involvement in crises management. Step by step, the European Health Union will be built. This project will be continued in the context discussions about a future convention for the revision of European treaties.

Next steps

After the plenary votes, the texts will need to be officially endorsed by Council before they are published in the EU Official Journal.

Background

The Commission presented a new framework for health security as part of building an European Health Union. It was based on experience with COVID-19. The package contains three pieces of legislation: a more powerful role for the European Medicines Agency; an extension of the mandate for the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and a proposal for a regulation regarding serious cross-border health threats.

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