EU SEEKS POWER TO DECLARE HEALTH EMERGENCIES UNDERMINING WHO

Thu 12 November 2020:

European Union is seeking a major shift in powers towards the EU’s health agencies, warning that Europe’s faltering approach to the coronavirus pandemic has caused “confusion and distrust”.

The EU commissioner for health, Stella Kyriakides, said the bloc’s lack of readiness for the crisis had meant substandard care for patients and left medics without access to vital resources.

The move follows an often uncoordinated reaction by the 27 EU governments to the COVID-19 pandemic, which at the beginning of the crisis led to competition on vital medical gear and export bans on medicines.

It also comes after the WHO was criticized for having declared the pandemic, which first emerged in China at the end of last year, too late. The U.N. agency has repeatedly denied the accusation.

Kyriakides, a former MP in Cyprus who is also a psychologist with a degree from Reading University, said she believed the pandemic had been a “wake-up call” to EU capitals.

She said: “We have seen in the beginning of this crisis how fragmentation can make member states more vulnerable. We saw that in the beginning, in the first few weeks, the effects of uncoordinated national measures. There was a lack of readiness and preparation.

“And we saw that with the shortfall of medical equipment, testing capacity and coordination in many areas. So this uncoordinated approach, what it directly means is that citizens don’t get the best healthcare.

“It means they don’t have the access that they should have to the medicines they need, to the medical devices and the medical equipment they may need.”

Under the proposals, the EU would be able to declare an EU-level public health emergency, which would in turn trigger more coordination among EU states.

Currently, the EU relies on the WHO to declare such an emergency.

“The new rules will enable the activation of EU emergency response mechanisms (..) without making it contingent upon the WHO’s own declaration of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern,” an EU document says, adding that such a move would be coordinated with the WHO.

If adopted, the overhaul would partly take away a major power from the WHO, as EU states call for reform of the organization to address shortfalls in emergencies.

“We relied too much on the WHO for the COVID-19 pandemic,” Peter Liese, a top EU lawmaker from German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party, said.

“Under pressure from China, the WHO declared the health emergency too late. It is therefore very important to have the possibility to act at European level in future similar situations.”

The WHO, which the Trump administration has labelled a puppet of China, was not immediately available to comment.

Under a new regulation on serious cross-border threats to health proposed by the European commission on Wednesday, EU member states would be obliged to report on the capacities of their healthcare systems, while national crisis plans would be scrutinised by the bloc’s officials for weaknesses.

The EU would establish a strengthened surveillance system using artificial intelligence to watch out for any outbreaks of disease or weaknesses in healthcare capacity within its territory.

An entirely new organisation modelled on the US biomedical research and development authority will also be formed by 2023 to build up stockpiles of key medicines and equipment. The Health Emergency Response Authority (Hera) will be tasked with developing a “surge capacity” in production for times when raw materials from outside of Europe might be scarce.

In the past, the bloc’s member states have resisted greater EU powers in the area of health. Most recently leaders cut heavily into the commission’s spending proposals on medical research and resilience for the next seven-year EU budget.

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