Mr. Maro? ?efovi:

I thank the Senator for the question.

The current status of the partnership council is as follows. As members are aware, I was appointed at the beginning of January to represent the EU in the partnership council, which is a body that was constituted under the trade and co-operation agreement. A couple of days ago, Michael Gove was appointed to represent the UK in the partnership council. We will have to constitute the partnership council as soon as possible and then the next step would be to set up a network of 19 specialised committees which would cover all the different aspects of the huge trade and co-operation relationship we have, and I believe we will develop with the United Kingdom in these new circumstances of the UK being a third country.

I am sure members already heard that one of the first tasks of the partnership council will also be to look at the ratification of the trade and co-operation agreement. In the end the Council supported the position of some member states that we would need more time for a conclusion of the ratification process because of the need to have appropriate authentic linguistic versions finalised so they could give their approval for the ratification. We are still waiting and working very closely with the European Parliament on the consent role. All that should be completed by the end of April when there will not only be provisional but full entry into force of the new trade and co-operation agreement between the EU and the UK.

If members will allow me to mentally picture the situation if the EU did not proceed with unanimity, unity and solidarity, we can ask what would be the situation on the vaccine market, how strong the big member states would be and what it would mean for the smaller and medium sized member states. We had just a small glimpse of that in the spring of last year when we suddenly discovered we had big problems with procuring health material and protective gear for health professionals. Therefore, I think it was the right decision, and I am glad that we have huge support for that approach from all member states to act with unity and solidarity and to have a joint approach to acquiring the necessary vaccines and also to invest well in advance in the most promising companies. As members can see, our assessment was the correct one because all the vaccines that are currently on the market were also supported financially by the European Union to develop them and to accelerate production.

What was perhaps not properly assessed at the time – this is not only the problem of the European Commission but also the companies with which we signed the advance purchase agreements – is that sometimes they were too optimistic about how they could scale up the production of the vaccines. One executive of a pharmaceutical company said that last year the company produced 100,000 vaccines and now it needs to produce 1 billion. This is a huge scale-up and it very often entails industrial adjustments to the production facilities. What we learned is useful for the steps we will take in the future because we now have the transparency we need. We know how many vaccines are manufactured in the EU and where they are going. The pharmaceutical companies are now making sure that if there is any shortfall or if they are not able to supply the quantities of the vaccines they promised, the shortfall in supply is fairly distributed among those with whom they have contracts. That is very important, as is the fact that there is a ramp-up in supplies. We expect that in the second quarter the vaccine supply for the European market will be sufficient to meet our agreed goal of having 70% of the adult population vaccinated by the end of the summer.

I accept that we must be aware of the new variants, be they the British or the South African ones. We are also looking at how we can accelerate the authorisation process for the necessary boost of the vaccines or an adjustment to the vaccines that already exist. We have to look at this from the perspective that 26 million vaccines have already been delivered to member states. If I remember correctly, something like 17 million people have already been vaccinated, at least with the first dose. When one assesses the rate of the vaccination roll-out, European member states are among the top 50 countries in the world. I am from Slovakia and I am sure that if we did not proceed as one with a unified approach, strong negotiation and the pressure we brought by being the biggest trading bloc, my country would not be among the top 50 because it would be extremely difficult to negotiate such a complex agreement with big pharmaceutical companies. That is a little related to another topic, but I very much appreciate the question.