Strona główna Grace O'SULLIVAN

Along with my colleagues in the Greens/EFA Group, I was pleased to vote in favour of the EU Health Action Programme 2021 - 2027 (EU4Health). The pandemic we are living through shows us how important it is to invest in healthcare.
This Programme will fund various actions in the field of public health, based on the three general objectives of (1) protecting people in the EU from serious cross-border health threats and improving crisis management capacity; (2) making medicines, medical devices and other crisis relevant products, available and affordable and supporting innovation; (3) strengthening health systems and the healthcare workforce, including by investing in public health, for instance through health promotion and disease prevention programmes and improving access to healthcare.
I am glad that the Greens/EFA Group played an active role in successfully amending the final text to include key provisions with regard to prevention, health inequalities, stress tests, health determinants and access to sexual and reproductive health services, as well as the adoption of indicators for harmful alcohol use and environmental pollution.

It is regretful that the revision of the InvestEU programme to help with the negative consequences of the COVID-19 crisis was not seized as an opportunity to better align InvestEU with the objectives of the Green Deal and the EU’s climate commitments. The Greens/EFA put forward amendments that would improve the text to include better language on climate and gender which ultimately were not supported. Therefore, I could not support the final text of this file that was presented in the plenary session and accordingly voted against it.

This resolution takes into account national measures to tackle Covid-19. I, along with my Green/EFA colleagues, voted in favour of this resolution because it stated that national emergency measures should be necessary, proportional and time limited. Freedom of media should be respected and disinformation challenged. Additionally, the resolution also called for the continued right to education as well as protection for vulnerable groups.