Mr. Thierry Breton:

The Deputy has asked many questions. I will try to summarise. I was tasked with this mission on 5 February. Some people have said that we should have started a little earlier. I remind the committee that the world was positively surprised when it realised at the beginning of December that some vaccines were working and required to be approved by our authorities and agencies. That was true of Pfizer at the beginning of December, Moderna at the end of December and AstraZeneca at the end of January. I was tasked in early February. I immediately went to sites to try to see how the ramp-up was going.

As I mentioned, there are 53 sites across Europe. Of course, I did not visit all of them but, together with the team I created for this specific task, I visited many of them. One of my biggest concerns related to the ramp-up having to be done in less than ten months, with some aspects having to be done in six months, which is a significant increase for this industry where it would usually take years to ramp-up in this way. That is why what has been done is very impressive. It was part of the criteria for selecting companies. All the scientific part of the vaccines were developed by biotech or academic teams such as those at BioNTech CureVac, Janssen or Oxford University. They were developed by very small teams which, it is important to remember, were funded by EU money. However, those teams did not have expertise of developing vaccines, which is why we favoured their entering into a partnership with a big pharmaceutical company which could be the one to produce vaccines. It was not easy because some of the companies did not know how to work together.

The second part we had to get right was the supply chain, which was extremely important. Of course, when you ramp up supply chains across a continent so quickly, with so many factories involved, there were instances of tension. The vaccines have between 300 and 500 components, so my biggest fear was whether we would be able to meet the requirements for some of the produce. That is why I immediately contacted Mr. Jeff Zients, my counterpart in the US. I wanted to make sure that we could exchange produce. Even if the United States had an executive order in place relating to the vaccines, I wanted to ensure we could have free co-operation in terms of the supply chain at least to avoid problems in this phase. There were some problems and I had to discuss many issues with the US authorities, but finally it worked more smoothly. We learned how to work together and it worked more smoothly than it did at the beginning. I did not know that some people refer to me as a vaccine hunter. I do not know how to take that.

It is important to state that I am very proud of what I have seen on the ground, with many entrepreneurs, some of whom are competitors, working together to try to find solutions. We ran a very important matchmaking event which we invited all the relevant companies, including those from Ireland, to join. We had two days together. Companies outlined what they could offer or needed. I hate to use this comparison but it is quite like we are at war. Even the companies that were competitors now work together on this common joint objective.

Intellectual property is a very important issue. We need to have this debate but my recommendation is that it should not be opened now because the key for us now is to produce a massive amount of vaccines. This is what we are doing. We should not destabilise the process. We must also make sure that we will be able to deliver enough doses for our partners outside Europe, including in Africa. That is extremely important. If we made the patent available free of charge and linked up with factories in Asia, for example, such as in India or elsewhere, it would take many months or possibly years to adapt the factory lines to produce the vaccines, especially the mRNA vaccines, but also the adenovirus vaccines which are quite complex. That would not solve the current issue. It is something we need to put on the agenda and discuss for the future but, as the person responsible for the vaccine task force and making sure the ramp-up of factories delivers what is needed for us and for the world, I think we are still at war and will prefer to focus on this issue. We will need to discuss the issue of intellectual property in the near future, it is hoped when this pandemic is behind us.