Vaccine against Covid-19 must be safe, must come fast and be produced at large scale / European Cooperation indispensable


“We need a vaccine that is safe, that comes fast and can be produced at large scale as soon as possible”, said Peter Liese, health-spokesperson of the largest parliamentary group in the European Parliament, (EPP Christian-Democrats), ahead of the presentation of the Commission’s Vaccine Strategy. The Commission will come with a set of proposals on Wednesday to make a vaccine against Covid-19 available for EU-citizens and the rest of the world as soon as possible. One key element of the proposal is a common advanced purchase of vaccines. The Commission will propose to spend 2.4 billion Euro of EU emergency plan to reserve doses of vaccine, even though the vaccine is not yet authorized. This builds up on an initiative of France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands that already concluded a contract with company AstraZeneca last week.

“I am optimistic that a vaccine against Covid-19 will be available in the course of the next 12 months. There is of course no guarantee, but scientists worldwide are investing a lot and I do not see a principle reason why they should not be successful. Even though we have great scientists and good projects in Europe, we cannot be sure that we are first. China or the United States may be ahead, and definitely, there will be a global competition on who will get the vaccine. That is why I very much support efforts to reserve as much as possible for EU-citizens and I also support the idea that the European Union commits to help especially developing countries. It’s very important that we do it together, that’s why the initiative of the four member states can only be a first step and I welcome their commitment to share a vaccine with EU27”, said Peter Liese, who is also a medical doctor. The European Medical Agency has also established a system of rolling Review of the scientific evidence and has established an expert committee. “This is very important, to not have any bottlenecks in the approval system. All vaccines that come to the European market are safe and this has to be the case with a Covid-19 vaccine. But we shouldn’t lose time because documents are not completed or the experts don’t have the time to look at the evidence.”


A very important piece of the Commission’s strategy is a legislative proposal to enable the fast start of large-scale clinical trials with a modern technology called messenger-RNA. This technology enables manufactures the production of large amounts of doses of vaccines. The respective companies have to respect, on top of the pharmaceutical law, also the legislation on GMO, because the vaccine is formally a genetically modified organism. Under this legislation, member states can assess the environmental effect of the organism independent from the European authorities. Experts think that this is very time-consuming and could block the speedy approval of a vaccine. “I think most people don’t have vaccine in mind when they speak about problems of GMOs. Here, we do not speak about food or plants, but a vaccine that is used in a very specific and targeted way. The Commission’s proposal will only allow a derogation for a vaccine against Covid-19. That is why I think the European Parliament will approve it. We shouldn’t block a life-saving solution which would also allow Europe to go back to normal for ideological reasons”, concluded Liese.