Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis today took part in the video conference of the European Council, which focused on the European Union’s strategy against the pandemic.
The Prime Minister, along with Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, pointed out the need to accelerate the licensing of vaccines which are in the final stage of the European Medicines Agency’s evaluation process -the first such example being the candidate developed by Oxford University in collaboration with AstraZeneca.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis stressed that Europe should henceforth act as a pioneer as far as licencing is concerned, especially when it comes to the approval of one-dose vaccines or jabs that do not require deep-freeze and thus can greatly affect national vaccination campaigns.
The Prime Minister made clear that this initiative is not aimed at applying political pressure on EMA, rather the purpose is to bypass time-consuming bureaucratic procedures, which delay decisions taken based on tangible scientific data.
In his remarks, Kyriakos Mitsotakis underlined the need to stick to the delivery timetables agreed upon with pharmaceutical companies for the first quarter of 2021, pointing out that in the fight against Covid-19 there is no time to lose.
The Prime Minister introduced to the discussion his proposal to establish a European vaccination certificate, stressing that at this stage the objective is to reach an agreement on the technical characteristics and the standardisation of the certificate’s form.
The preparatory work needs to be completed so that Europe is ready to discuss the uses of the certificate when the number of European citizens who have been inoculated has increased substantially.
Regarding the emergence of new strains of the coronavirus, the Prime Minister pointed out the importance of exchanging best practices among member states of the European Union, in order to deal with them effectively.
