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€30 billion European Health Emergency Authority in place by start of 2022

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Today (16 September), the European Commission launched what it describes as the missing block in its overall architecture in its European Health Union, a Health Emergency preparedness and Response Authority (HERA) to prevent, detect, and rapidly respond to health emergencies.

Health Commissioner Kyriakides said that it was clear from the pandemic that people wanted the EU to do more. While the EU is now the most vaccinated continent on the planet and its vaccine roll out has been largely successful, Kyriakides said that the actions at the time were ad hoc and the pandemic had shown that a more structured approach is needed. 

Margaritis Schinas, Commission vice president, laid out the background and what he described as the “prophets of doom” trying to convince Europeans that it would not succeed, holding up a frontpage from The Economist showing a tattered European flag, at the top of a syringe, with the heading: “What has gone wrong?” The magazine was from April this year. 

The EU’s slow start to vaccination at the beginning of the year was largely due to AstraZeneca’s (AZ) failure to respect its Advanced Purchase Agreement. A Belgian court later found in the EU’s favour declaring that AZ had intentionally breached the “best reasonable efforts” and the contractual warranty it gave.

At the start of the pandemic the EU had to take rapid decisions, despite an absence of competency and with the challenge of taking a common approach. It is hoped that the new authority will help overcome the challenges it faced to activate emergency funding and negotiate, procure and distribute medical supplies and vaccines on behalf of its member states. The new structure is designed to learn the lessons and build a more resilient system that is also able to look at other major threats, not just new variants of COVID-19 but other health challenges such as growing anti-microbial resistance to antibiotics. 

HERA is not a new EU agency, but an internal Commission structure, this is partly about ensuring it is fully operational by early 2022. A senior Commission official explained that this was so that it could be set up without delay. The Commission will involve the European Parliament closely in its operation, this is described in an additional decision. 

HERA has access to  €30 billion, it will not require new money as such, but will draw its funding from the current Multiannual Financial Framework for the period 2022-2027, including the NextGenerationEU top-up (€6bn) and an estimated (€24bn) from other 

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EU programmes. Its functioning will be reviewed and adapted on an annual basis until 2025, when a full review will be carried out.

“HERA has a clear mission: ensuring the availability, access and distribution of medical countermeasures in the Union,” said Schinas. “HERA is the EU's response for both anticipating and managing emergencies. HERA will have the clout and budget to work with industry, medical experts, researchers and our global partners to make sure critical equipment, medicines and vaccines are swiftly available when and as necessary.”

Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton said: “With HERA, we draw the lessons learned from the crisis: we cannot ensure our citizens' health without industrial capacity in the EU and well-functioning supply chains. We succeeded in upgrading COVID-19 vaccine production in record time, for Europe and the rest of the world. But we need to be better prepared for future health crises. HERA will establish new, adaptable production capacities and secure supply chains to help Europe react fast when needed.”

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