David SASSOLI, EP President, speaks to the press following his interventions to the video conference of the members of the European Council. This transcription speech is the result of an automatic process. Check against delivery.

Press conference by David SASSOLI, EP President, on the European Council (25 -26 February 2021): opening statement

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SOUNDBITE (Original), Jaume DUCH GUILLOT, Spokesperson and Director-General for Communication of the EP, President Sassoli has just spoken at the European Council and he will be telling you what the main messages in his speech were and will then have time to take questions. President, please.

SOUNDBITE (Original), David SASSOLI, EP President, Yes, thank you and good afternoon. It's become a tradition almost. We'll introduce the work at the European Council. There are two issues on the agenda. First of all, vaccines and the European public health policy and then an issue of general interest. When it comes to vaccines. The pandemic is now a year in. It's one of the most dramatic events in our history.

SOUNDBITE (Original), David SASSOLI, EP President, And we need to draw on this experience and try and identify where the weaknesses lie and then build a common policy on that. The 27 member state governments have understood that we needed to act together, and it was of fundamental importance that the European Commission be given the power to bear the economic cost of purchasing these vaccines, checking them and then buying them, purchasing them on behalf of all of the countries of the EU.

SOUNDBITE (Original), David SASSOLI, EP President, And this is a qualitative leap. It's important to take note of the fact that everyone has understood that without an EU with more powers, no one individually will be able to stave off this type of crisis. And the pandemic, of course, has affected the lives of our citizens and companies. We very much want to launch this initiative, the instruments, the legislation, the legal basis, the organisation of our EU needs to be up to the challenge and we have identified many weaknesses when it comes to purchasing the vaccines.

SOUNDBITE (Original), David SASSOLI, EP President, There the commission has had to act very swiftly and has had to make swift progress. And we need a qualitative leap now. And that was my message to Council. We need to give some thought to how we make sure that we don't go back to how things were before and we should delegate powers to the EU so that we can have a true common public health policy.

SOUNDBITE (Original), David SASSOLI, EP President, How otherwise can we defend ourselves, protect ourselves from a next pandemic or crisis? We need to make sure that the EU is in a position to have the powers and the clout to act. And I think now is the time to make sure that we can ensure this. And if that means a treaty change, then that can't be a taboo.

SOUNDBITE (Original), David SASSOLI, EP President, A transfer of powers to bring about what our citizens are asking from us, which is to protect their health through truly European policies. Well, the time has now come to do that. And we need to bear this in mind so that the experience that we have had over the last year doesn't make us go back to how things were.

SOUNDBITE (Original), David SASSOLI, EP President, As I said, we spotted a number of weaknesses and we need to make sure that we deal with those. Contracts, of course, need to be respected and we need transparency when it comes to vaccines. That's how you create or instil trust in your population. But we need to make sure that our industry and all of our countries is in a position to supply these vaccines. That's important to it's an urgent matter. It's not a matter of money. But will.

SOUNDBITE (Original), David SASSOLI, EP President, We need the willingness to do this and we need to make sure that we can have a network of industrial capacity throughout the EU because otherwise we won't be able to face up to this type of pandemic and we won't be able to do it within the time period that we said, which is that 70 percent of the EU's population needs to be vaccinated before the summer, that we need EU policies. That is the lesson that we've learnt from the covid-19 pandemic.

SOUNDBITE (Original), David SASSOLI, EP President, And we also need European policies to regulate mobility within the EU. We've seen countries who try to regulate matters for themselves. And over the past few days, the Commission has intervened. Rightly so. They've reminded these countries that this is not the way to go about it. That said, we need to come up with instruments so that we can have a mobility policy in place, which is just and non-discriminatory.

SOUNDBITE (Original), David SASSOLI, EP President, A vaccine certificate can be one of those instruments. Between now and the end of summer we have such priority. And we need to make sure that we have instruments in place which are equivalent for all of us. A vaccine certificate is on the agenda at the European Council. And I hope that this will be agreed to so that we can have an EU policy instrument.

SOUNDBITE (Original), David SASSOLI, EP President, As you all know, there are many discussions which are ongoing. Vaccines is a broad issue. There's a scientific dimension to it, and then there's a behavioural dimension to it. And you can see how countries and governments have behaved over the past few months. And of course, we also need to support research and research has come up. They arrived at a result before industry did that. It's the first time in history that science leads industry and the industry is struggling to keep up with science.

SOUNDBITE (Original), David SASSOLI, EP President, But again, this should give us food for thought, how important industry is and how central they are to resilience in the EU and of course, we need to be self-sufficient too. Now, if you think back to a year ago, then this is an ongoing lesson. A year ago we didn't have any masks because all of the production had been relocated to other areas in the world at lower cost. And this has made us realise that we shouldn't relocate parts of our industry, we need our industry so that we can have supplies, in this case of vaccines.

SOUNDBITE (Original), David SASSOLI, EP President, And of course, we need to bear in mind what the rules are that apply, it has to be compatible with the green deal. We have dates for 2030 and 2050 and we will have a profoundly different industry by those dates. But the European Council is important because it allows all of the governments to lend clarity to many aspects.

SOUNDBITE (Original), David SASSOLI, EP President, But above all, it allows us to start this assessment and it allows us to take stock of the last year, which has been such a dramatic year for all of us and which teaches us a number of lessons. It wouldn't be wise to shelve those lessons and to just go back to how things were before. That's the main political message I put across.

SOUNDBITE (Original), David SASSOLI, EP President, Of course, there are a lot of other issues and aspects that come into play. You're well aware of those. But I think that the issue of vaccination is a precondition for the recovery of the economy. And it's the premise, really. Instruments that have been made available to member states can only be successful if vaccination is in place. Thank you.

Event date	25/02/2021
Reference:	I202351V
Format:	16:9 format
Copyright:	© European Union
copyrightYear:	2021

Press conference by David SASSOLI, EP President, on the European Council (25 -26 February 2021): opening statement

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