Members of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) have an exchange of views with Stella KYRIAKIDES, Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, in the European Parliament in Brussels. Opening remark by Pascal CANFIN (Renew,FR), ENVI Chair and by Stella KYRIAKIDES, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, as part of the structured dialogue. The transcription of the speeches is the result of an automatic process. Check against delivery.

Brussels

exchange of views

meeting

Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety

healthcare safety (T)

CANFIN, Pascal (Renew, FR)

KYRIAKIDES, Stella (CY, EC)

Coronavirus outbreak (T)

vaccination strategy (T)

Exchange of views with Stella KYRIAKIDES, Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, in ENVI Committee: Opening remark by Pascal CANFIN (Renew, FR), ENVI Chair and by Stella KYRIAKIDES, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety

SOUNDBITE (Original), Pascal CANFIN (Renew,FR), chair, Good morning, good morning to you all in the room. And good morning to the MEPs participating remotely. May I ask you to be quiet? Thank you. So we are going to first to adopt the agenda. I guess there is no objection and we can move to agenda item number two, which is the exchange of views with Stella Kyriakides. And I insist on the fact that it is a structured dialogue. So it's not a topic-focussed.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Pascal CANFIN (Renew,FR), chair, Of course, we all expect a lot of questions on the covid-19, but of course, you're free to enlarge the scope of this discussion and exchange your views with Ms. Kyriakides. So I welcome you, Commissioner, in this committee. And just for everybody to know, there is a sharp constraint for interlocutors to leave us at 10 o'clock because there is an important college meeting later on.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Pascal CANFIN (Renew,FR), chair, So we close at 10:00. We will, of course, start with the introductory remarks by the commissioner, then the coordinators, then a list of 10 questions from MEPs. And if we have time, catch-the-eye. Stella, the floor is yours.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Stella KYRIAKIDES, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, Thank you. Thank you, honourable members. Thank you, Pascal. Yes, the college meeting starts today, it was scheduled after we set this meeting. So I apologise. So thank you for inviting me to this committee today to have the structured dialogue. And I'm looking forward to a frank and fruitful exchange of views, as always, with you. First of all, I'll begin with our ongoing efforts as a union to keep the covid pandemic and build back better from it.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Stella KYRIAKIDES, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, We do still have some way to go, but we have definitely turned the corner, thanks largely to our vaccine strategy. As of today, we have now administered one hundred and seventeen million vaccine doses in the EU and we're getting close to administering three million vaccinations every day. Over thirty million of our citizens are now fully vaccinated.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Stella KYRIAKIDES, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, Production capacities across the EU is gathering pace, making it possible to speed up deliveries and have an additional 50 million doses from Pfizer over the next ten weeks. We are also preparing for the next stages of the pandemic and the booster shots of our citizens, which they may be needing. Negotiations are now ongoing for the purchase of one point eight billion doses for 2022 and 2023.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Stella KYRIAKIDES, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, The solidarity and cooperation driving our vaccine strategy underpins our proposals for a European Health Union, which are currently being discussed by yourselves and Council. With a strong health union that puts citizens' health first, we can be better prepared for health threats. When protecting our citizens we need to be one step ahead. In addition to providing the EU with a more comprehensive set of tools, our health agencies, ECDC and EMA will be fully equipped to play the role we expect and we need from them.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Stella KYRIAKIDES, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, Later this year, we will come forward with the proposal for a Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority. HERA should be operational at the very latest by 2023 and enable us to act quickly and react quickly to health emergencies. Its precursor, the HERA incubator, is already focussing on adapting existing vaccines to variants.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Stella KYRIAKIDES, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, Honourable members, time is crucial. With your support, we hope to see all these proposals adopted swiftly and start laying the foundations for a health union fit for the future. On top of these foundations, we are already adding key building blocks. Europe's beating cancer plan. This will help us turn the tide against cancer.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Stella KYRIAKIDES, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, The EU pharmaceutical strategy. This will create a future proof and crisis resilient system of pharmaceuticals, both patient-centred. They have patients are very heart. Another building block is the Health Technology Assessment Regulation, which will help to support patients access to innovative treatment. We have addressed Parliament's concerns and we are very ready to work with you on a compromise, that provides added value.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Stella KYRIAKIDES, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, In turn, this framework will benefit from the common European health data space we are creating. Delivering on this would not be possible without the Parliament's support for our ambitious EU4Health funding programme. And I want to thank you once again for the support for this programme. We are now putting together the first annual work programme.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Stella KYRIAKIDES, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, Honourable members, this brings me to antimicrobial resistance. This is still one of the most serious threats to global health. It lays bare the links between environmental, animal and human health. Addressing it, therefore, requires a broad joined up response. The EU's One Health Action Plan Against AMR pursues ambitious measures to address the drivers of AMR and to promote the use of antimicrobials.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Stella KYRIAKIDES, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, Also, our Farm to Fork Strategy seeks to halve the EU sales of antimicrobials for farmed animals and aquaculture by 2030. Farm to fork lies at the very heart of the European Green Deal with an ambitious timeline. Its first deliverables included recommendations to enable member states to meet the strategy's targets, the cap objectives of the Green Deal ambitions.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Stella KYRIAKIDES, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, Another early deliverable will be the code of conduct for reasonable, responsible businesses and marketing practises to be signed by EU food associations and companies by June. And this code will include commitments to take concrete health and sustainability measures such as lowering environmental footprint and energy consumption, adapting marketing to promote healthier products, and reducing packaging.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Stella KYRIAKIDES, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, We're also working on the legislative framework on sustainable food systems to be adopted by 2023. It will lay down general principles for sustainable food system, address the responsibilities of all axes and raise sustainability standards. To achieve the farm to fork pesticides targets, we are also progressing on the revision of the sustainable use of pesticides directives. Here again, our ambitious timeline should be should result in a proposal early next year.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Stella KYRIAKIDES, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, There is no time to lose. Society stakeholders and policymakers all want effective and coordinated action. And you, the ENVI Committee, have made your expectations on pesticides extremely clear to us. Finally, we cannot make the transition towards sustainable food systems alone. With a chapter on sustainable food systems and future trade agreements, we can promote the global transition towards competitive systems with our partners.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Stella KYRIAKIDES, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, We will use the results of our fitness checks of animal welfare legislation and the evaluation of the animal welfare strategy to propose new legislation by 2023. We will be taking into account ethical considerations around farming animals that Europeans raised, for example, through the successful citizens initiative of the end of the cage. The Green Deal and the Farm to Fork strategy recognise the need for innovative ways to protect harvest from pests and diseases.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Stella KYRIAKIDES, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, They also consider how innovative techniques could make food systems more sustainable. Next week, we'll be publishing two studies requested by the Council, one on new genomic techniques and one of counterproductive materials. We will then be engaging in a wide ranging communication effort to share the results of the studies and discuss their outcome with you, the Council and all stakeholders.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Stella KYRIAKIDES, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, I have used repeatedly one word this morning. I don't know if you have picked it up. That is the word 'ambitious' and this is what we need to be across the board. If we are to deliver a post-covid-19 recovery that makes Europe healthier, more resilient and more sustainable, we can be and we must be ambitious. And if we're going to exit this pandemic as quickly as possible in order to go back to economies and citizens way of life, of a new normality, we need to be ambitious.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Stella KYRIAKIDES, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, And despite the pandemic, I can just assure you that we have been working on all aspects of the portfolio continuously in order that we move forward in this ambitious way across the board. So I want to thank you. I thank the close cooperation with this committee, with its chairman, Pascal, with all the all the coordinators, with the Parliament as a whole, because together we could make this happen. Thank you.

SOUNDBITE (Original), Pascal CANFIN (Renew,FR), chair, Thank you very much, Commissioner.