Verbatim report of proceedings

Wednesday, 10 February 2021 - Brussels

The state of play of the EU’s COVID-19 Vaccination Strategy (debate)

  Radan Kanev (PPE). – Madam President, we declared vaccination a common cause, a common European solution to both the health and economic crisis, and the Commission made an enormous effort to procure vaccines at the best possible price and safety and reliability standards. Yet success came at a price: a delay of the vaccination process itself.

I hope the vaccine shortage will be behind us quite soon. And still, we face two major problems. One is the mass reluctance of the people to vaccinate, and another is the staggering gap in the pace of vaccination campaigns in the different countries, where countries with completely different standards, like Bulgaria and the Netherlands, are both lingering behind due to mismanagement of the crisis.

Therefore I call on the Commission to launch a pan-European campaign against disinformation, but also to actively intervene where national authorities fail to procure vaccines for their citizens. Some might argue it’s a national competence. I would answer that if it’s a common cause, if it’s a common fight, if we are to leave no one behind, then we should not leave behind those already left behind by their governments.