Verbatim report of proceedings

Wednesday, 24 November 2021 - Strasbourg

The EU's role in combating the COVID-19 pandemic: how to vaccinate the world (topical debate)

  Samira Rafaela (Renew). – Madam President, five months ago the European Parliament made its position clear on how to vaccinate the world. The Commission and Member States had every opportunity to take ideas from this resolution and move forward. For example, supporting lifting patents for vaccines to expand production, but so far the Commission has not pushed for the lifting of patents, and global goals are not yet reached.

This Parliament outlined concrete options in the resolution on how we can move forward to address the challenges we are debating here today. Increasing global distribution is the most important step, and this is still a major challenge. Especially in developing countries, the distribution of vaccines still proves to be a major challenge. Only 6% of people in Africa are fully vaccinated according to the WHO, and the EU cannot accept that our twin continent is left behind in vaccination, and many developing countries want to vaccinate their people but have either no access to vaccines or problems with distribution.

We must do more as the EU to assist countries in getting vaccines to the people, and we need to find concrete solutions to expand production and distribution globally. Since June, the Commission is discussing how compulsory licensing could contribute to expanding production. But I see a lack of concrete action: a TRIPS waiver on patents for vaccines, expanding possibilities of compulsory licensing making global distribution easier, assisting developing countries in getting vaccines to their people.

We are collectively under-performing on all fronts and we need to understand this debate, this situation, is about human rights. It’s about human life. We won’t get out of the pandemic if the rest of the world is left behind. So I’m urging everyone here today, we must end the pandemic, we all agree, we must vaccinate the world. It’s a human right.