EU 'still not' ready for future pandemic, MEP warns

Van Brempt said that while understandably "people want to move on" from the pandemic, "it is very important that parliament has taken the time to look in depth what happened during the pandemic at the EU level".

The draft report was adopted by the special Covid-19 committee on Monday evening by 23 votes in favour, 13 against, and one abstention, and the plenary is expected to vote on it in July.

There had been an enormous 3,000 amendments tabled, and 350 compromises reached.

"If there was one failure that we all agree upon, it was the fact that there was not equal access to vaccines, and not as affordable for everybody, especially the global south. That creates further polarisation in the world, as we know being in another crisis today is something we really need to tackle as well," she said.

Asked about the MEPs and voters who remain sceptical of the vaccines or the pandemic's causes and see oppression in public Covid measures, the Belgian lawmaker said she was worried about the extent fake news forms the basis of opinions.

"The accusation that the vaccines caused many extra deaths in our societies is not based on science," MEP Van Brempt said.

"We need minority opinions, but I am very concerned about the fact that science has been put aside, and many opinions are based on fake news," she said, adding that it it is similar in the case of Ukraine and Brexit.

Both Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla and EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen had snubbed the special committee which was set up in March 2022. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines were the first one developed and ready to mitigate the impacts of Covid-19 infections.

Pfizer's Bourla and von der Leyen reportedly conducted personal negotiations via text message.

The committee nevertheless heard from eight other commissioners — but did not have access to the full unredacted versions of the vaccine contracts.

Schools and parliaments

One of the recommendations of the committee is not to close national parliaments during pandemics, to keep governments in check.

MEPs want the right to information and freedom of expression to be better protected, transparent decision-making processes, and parliamentary oversight at both EU and national level when emergency legislation is being adopted.

Lawmakers also suggest keeping some schools open, if the epidemiological situation allows it.

"Some countries tended to shut down schools, we said, as a general rule, secondary schools should stay open where is possible," centre-right Spanish MEP Dolors Montserrat, who was in charge of putting together the report, said that the "digital certificate proved to be effective"

MEPs also want EU countries to boost access to digital tools. Montserrat also said that the "digital certificate proved to be effective".

Some of the other proposals include investing more in healthcare, introducing surveillance plans on emerging health threats, and carrying out stress tests on national healthcare systems.

MEPs also urged increasing transparency for joint procurement activities, improving the EU's strategic autonomy on key pharmaceutical ingredients and medicines, and developing an EU strategy to tackle "long Covid".

MEPs called for international investment and coordination to be increased to scale up vaccines production globally, reinforcing the cooperation between the EU and the World Health Organisation (WHO) and for a constructive solution to be found on intellectual property protection.

"The next commission needs to take this report as a sort of basis when working on both health care and health systems, and on becoming much more crisis resilient," Van Brempt said.