Covidcommissie: 5 belangrijke lessen geleerd uit de pandemie

COVID-19 was niet de laatste crisis. Het was niet de laatste pandemie. We moeten eerlijk durven zeggen dat de Europese Unie niet was voorbereid om zo'n crisis aan te pakken. Net daarom is het werk van onze commissie zo belangrijk: leren uit het verleden om sterker te staan voor de crisissen die komen. Ik sprak op het 'Health Security in the EU'- congres van de Europese Commissie over enkele van de belangrijkste lessen die we kunnen trekken uit de pandemie. Je kan mijn volledige speech hieronder nalezen.

“It is an honour to be here as Chair of the Special Committee on COVID-19. The mission of our Committee is straightforward: to prepare this Union for new crises by drawing lessons from the pandemic.

The importance of learning from the past is clear: the pandemic has not yet ended, but already we find ourselves in the next crisis. This is no longer an exceptional situation. In the past fifteen years, the European Union has weathered a financial crisis, a refugee crisis, a pandemic and now a war.

During all these crises, we saw that the European Union often lacked the necessary tools to act quickly. Member states only agreed to a European response when it was in fact already too late. This was the case with the joint procurement of vaccines and recently with the response to the energy prices. 

There is a wisdom among Europe watchers: every crisis makes the European Union stronger. I believe this is only partly true. Every crisis forces member states to find European solutions. But once the worst is over, they often neglect to learn from what happened, in order to become more resilient in the future. This approach creates a Union that can react to crises, but lacks the political mandate to sufficiently prepare for them.

Our task is to fundamentally change this dynamic. Climate change and the declining post-World War II international order will lead to more pandemics and wars. It is our duty to put on record what we have learned and to be the driver of profound changes in the European response. That way, future policy makers might be better prepared than we were.

The COVI committee is a special committee. I use the word ‘special’ not only in a procedural sense of the word, but also in a normative one. 

It is the first time that an EU institution assesses the COVID-19 pandemic in a holistic manner. Our aim is to break through the silos of ordinary parliamentary work and look at all aspects of society.

The reason why is simple: this crisis was not only a health crisis, but also a crisis of inequality, of democracy, of fundamental rights and of international governance. 

These crises - and I cannot emphasise this enough - are interlinked. Let me give you an example: The poorest countries in our Union are also those with the lowest vaccination rates. Even if the European Union secured vaccine equity in theory, reality cannot be understood without a holistic vision. 

That is why the COVI Committee has four pillars in its mandate: health, global response, socio-economic impact and the impact on democracy and fundamental rights.

Our Committee has been operating for seven months now. During this period, we heard Commissioners, health ministers, epidemiologists, EU officials, CEOs of pharmaceutical companies, international organisations and trade unions. These sessions covered the health and global pillars of the mandate. 

We now have started the hearings on the socio-economic pillar, during which we discuss the effects of the pandemic on health workers and children, EU financial support instruments and more. From January onwards, we will talk about the spread of disinformation and misinformation, the impact on EU democracies and the impact on fundamental rights.

I will take the opportunity to share 5 lessons we have learned on the health and global pillars, and some recommendations that I believe should be included in the final report.

First lesson: you need strong institutions and you need to build them beforehand

At the beginning of the pandemic, the US was led by a president who openly questioned the findings of his scientists and downplayed the seriousness of the virus.

Still, thanks to BARDA, the US were the first to invest in COVID-19 vaccine candidates. When Europe went into lockdown in March 2020, the US had already awarded half a billion dollars 

to Johnson & Johnson for vaccine development. Not much later, Moderna, Sanofi and Merck together received another half billion of early government financing for vaccine development. The US spent more than $1 billion in the months of February, March, and April 2020 on vaccine development alone.

By contrast, the Commission launched its first call for companies to work on medical countermeasures in March 2020. Only 5.7 million of the 48 million euros allocated were used to develop vaccines. 

Five million. Almost 200 times less than what the Americans spent.

Before the US Congress had approved an additional multi-billion top-up to counter COVID-19, BARDA was able to provide the majority of this cash from its own general budget. Millions of lives were saved because the US had robust and independent government institutions.

Now, the EU is not led by a ‘President Trump’ and hopefully it never will be. But we do have 27 member states, and among these member states, we occasionally DO have Trumps of our own.

That is why I really applaud the Commission for launching HERA. 

It is exactly what we need. However, HERA is underfunded, understaffed and does not have the autonomy that saved the US in 2020. Even in times of pandemics, it does not have a right to procure exclusively. We simply cannot look away from that. 

We will therefore keep pressing for an autonomous agency with legal and financial firepower. We will keep advocating for HERA’s ability to procure fast and exclusively.

Should the Treaties be re-opened, we will advocate for more EU competences in the field of cross-border health threats and emergencies.

This brings me to the second lesson: in a pandemic you need cash, and you need it fast.

We don’t say this often enough, but the Emergency Support Instrument saved Europe. When the Commission proposed to use it for vaccine procurement in June 2020, it was the first time the EU had a sizable budget to combat the pandemic. 

It gave the Commission the autonomy and leverage to sit at the negotiating table with pharmaceutical companies. Thanks to ESI, the EU was able to take the risks that were necessary for vaccine development and production.

Yet again: the numbers look very modest. The EU invested 350 million euros through Horizon 2020 and 2.1 billion euros through ESI on vaccine development and production in 2020. The member states chipped in a meagre 750 million euros. BARDA, on the other hand, spent more than 19 billion dollars on vaccine development and production.

This is a fraction of what lockdowns were costing our economies daily. 

I don’t have the numbers for Europe, but according to multiple studies, lockdowns were costing the US economy 26 billion dollars per day. I believe Europe won’t be far from such projections.

One day in lockdown cost us ten times what we spent on vaccine development. This is clearly something we need to reflect on…

We therefore need to be able to launch financial bazookas in times of emergency. Not just for pandemics, but also for wars and climate emergencies. We need war time financing when our economies are collapsing.

I will therefore propose adding an emergency clause to our budgetary rules. This should allow the EU,in exceptional circumstances to move money from other budget lines to a single, central pot, like ESI. 

This should give the EU a better ability to intervene at scale when our lives and livelihoods are at stake.

Third lesson: you need strong legal powers to intervene in the market during emergencies

I visited Washington last Summer to speak to members of Operation Warp Speed. I asked them how, in the early stages of the pandemic, the government had such an accurate picture of the production facilities and supply linkages on the ground. 

In Europe, we hardly knew where our manufacturing plants were, much less how the supply chain worked or to whom they were delivering.

They told me it was simple: because they had a big pot of money and because they had activated the Defense Production Act, companies called the government constantly. 

They wanted to get money, of course, but they also wanted to reassure themselves of their obligations under the DPA. 

These calls allowed the White House Staff to carefully map out where companies that produced medicinal products or medical devices were located. They also learned the potential and capacity of the companies, what contract orders were placed and from whom these contract orders came.

In Europe, it was the other way around: Commissioner Breton had to personally go to every manufacturer and subcontractor to get some transparency on the capacities and the bottlenecks. The Commission had no legal tools to enforce transparency - let alone to ensure that supplies went where they were most needed.

That is why I do not understand why the Single Market Emergency Instrument, which would grant the Commission extensive powers in this regard, does not cover pharmaceutical products and medical devices. With the best of my abilities, I do not get it. It is a grave error. The Council’s emergency framework for HERA is not a replacement for the Emergency Instrument, but is complementary to it.

I see it as an absolute priority to extend the Instrument to medicines and medical devices, and I will liaise with my colleagues in the relevant committees to make this happen.

Fourth lesson: transparency is crucial to establish trust, especially during crises

We all remember the time AstraZeneca announced that they would slash their vaccine deliveries with 75% in the early vaccine roll-out. There was an enormous public outrage. After one year in lockdown, the news could not have been worse. Journalists were quick to point towards the EU. Everyone was ready to believe that we would have done better on our own, that the UK indeed was better off than the EU.

In the midst of this anger, it were often the MEPs who had to go on national television to defend the EU joint procurement. I recall appearing on one of Belgium’s most important talkshows the day that Commissioner Kyriakides said that first come, first served policies apply to local butcher shops, but not to vaccine distribution.

That evening, I had to defend the contracts without ever having seen them. I had to discuss matters such as liability and best efforts clauses, without having the right to make an objective assessment for myself. Parliamentarians had to rely solely on the scant information that the Commission had provided.

If something goes wrong in a member state, it is the responsible minister who will have to explain what happened to the people. This is not the case in Europe. If something important happens in the EU, the MEPs are the ones who have to explain the situation to the national media and the voters.

Involvement of the European Parliament in vaccine procurement, in the Health crisis board and in advisory bodies is therefore not a frivolity. It is sheer necessity. You need people who are aware of what is going on and who can stand up for EU policies.

We will examine the involvement of the European Parliament in the crisis management. We will look into Parliament’s access to documents, and its right to make a real assessment of what’s happening. This means: no secure reading rooms where you can’t even bring pen and paper, let alone ask for legal advice from an expert.

In our discussion on this subject with Commissioner Jourova, she brought up the Trade Secrets Directive as a limiting factor. 

I believe that what makes a trade secret, is mostly a matter of interpretation. Many things that are regarded as trade secrets or commercially sensitive by pharmaceutical companies, are in fact not, and should belong to the public sphere. But... if we need to reform the trade secrets directive to get transparency, we will not shy away from pushing for it.

Another point I would like to raise, is transparency in connection to accountability. The EU joint procurement strategy saved millions of lives. Thanks to the EU, we were able to invest in a broad portfolio of vaccines and spread the risks that come with vaccine development and production. I will be forever grateful for that.

However, we do have a problem with the third contract between the EU and Pfizer/BioNTech. This is the EU’s biggest, most expensive contract. It is also the only one for which the European Court of Auditors did not receive records of the preliminary negotiations. That cannot be. The price and volume of the contract were agreed during the preliminary negotiations. These discussions must have been documented in some way.

It is not acceptable that bodies appointed by the treaties to scrutinise the budget do not get access to all the relevant information.

Our Committee therefore requests full access to all documents pertaining to the preliminary negotiations of the contracts, regardless of the format in which they were stored. In particular, this refers to the third Pfizer/BioNTech agreement.

We need an honest and transparent communication from the Commission about the nature of the process leading up to the contract signature. Failing to do so would cast a dark shadow over the EU joint procurement success.

Based on the lessons learned, we will also discuss if a revision of the transparency regulation is necessary, to ensure that it is fit for purpose in our digital age.

Fifth lesson: international cooperation is key

When the EU fell behind in the vaccines race early 2021, almost all of our shortages were due to production problems.

Vaccine supply chains are international, and therefore particularly vulnerable to export restrictions.

Almost all of our companies were sourcing vaccine inputs from the US, but because of its America First politics, inputs were not coming our way.

The EU-US vaccines task force that was set up to solve this problem, was crucial to our success. It allowed both governments to get a clear and honest overview of the interlinkages and interdependencies of their industries. It avoided the breakdown of mutual trust, which would have inevitably led to more trade bans.

The lesson here is that diplomatic platforms are crucial during global emergencies. I therefore think that the EU should introduce emergencies chapters in its trade and association agreements. These chapters could be activated during pandemics, wars, climate emergencies and such. 

Foremost, they should provide guidelines for transparency and cooperation during emergencies. But they should also foresee in the establishment of joint committees that become operational on the first day of the emergency outbreak. Like the EU-US vaccines task force, these platforms should exchange information on trade measures, relevant domestic regulations, supply chains problems, etc.

It is one way in which our network of trade agreements could foster future resilience. The upcoming negotiations with India could provide a perfect opportunity to implement these measures for the first time.

In addition, I believe that one important lesson we learned from the pandemic is that you should always listen empathically. Especially when it comes to the TRIPS waiver, I am convinced that we initially did not listen enough to other countries. We behaved like technocrats on the world stage.

A TRIPS waiver would not have hurt us. But the rejection of the waiver did. It gave China and Russia further opportunities to get closer to low and middle income countries through vaccine diplomacy. 

Therefore I sincerely hope that we will not make the same mistake twice, now that we are discussing the extension of the waiver and the pandemic treaty. 

We would do well to keep in mind that there are commitments that we will want from other countries too: strict regulation of the wet markets, 

protection of biodiversity, pandemic surveillance and reporting, action plans against AMR, to name a few. 

We cannot demand that other countries close wet markets, stop serving antibiotics to livestock, or stop exploiting forests while expecting that we can shield our pharmaceutical sector at any cost. 

Every nation believes it has interests to safeguard. In this treaty, we need to fight for the greater good. We have to agree that we will all do whatever it takes to both prevent and end pandemics. And we will all have to make concessions to this end.

This is a first overview of what I believe will be important for the committee report’s conclusions: EU institutional capacity, financial firepower, legal muscle, higher transparency standards, and novel international cooperation opportunities. The points I have raised today are not an exhaustive list. They are an appetizer that, I hope,will make you want the entire menu.

I am sincerely grateful to DG SANTE and the health minister of Luxembourg for inviting me, and to the audience for paying attention. 

The real work on the report will start by the end of February, when the rapporteur will present her draft proposal in committee. 

In the meantime, both I and the COVI members would be happy to receive any information or recommendations that would contribute to our final conclusions. “