Safer, faster and more efficient approval of vaccines

The EPP Group wants the European Union to become a true Health Union with more health powers. To this end, the EPP Group will vote today for more resources for the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to prevent shortages of critical medicines and medicinal devices. Furthermore, clinical trials will be made more transparent, so that the EMA will be able to approve medicinal products, including vaccines, faster, without hindering their safety.

"The COVID pandemic showed us that even something as complicated as developing and approving a vaccine is possible in a relatively short time, if our scientists are left to work to their fullest capacity. This is why the EPP Group pushed for the so-called rolling review, a process of reviewing data as they become available from ongoing studies, to become a standard work tool in the EMA. We must draw on a positive experience from the COVID pandemic, when this way of working has proved successful. We want the EMA to coordinate clinical trials better in the future", said Cristian Silviu Bușoi MEP, the EPP Group's negotiator of the new law.

"We cannot go back to things as they were in the past. The EMA must get powers and funding to apply this working method for all medicinal products in the future, also when there’s no health emergency", he added.

"We must also make sure that European hospitals never face a medical standstill because they run out of lifesaving medicines such as antibiotics due to a lack of crucial ingredients produced in India or China. The health of European citizens must always be our first priority. That is why we need a stronger and better prepared EMA", said Peter Liese MEP, the EPP Group's Spokesman for Health.

The European Parliament is expected to confirm an agreement this afternoon reached between Member States and the European Parliament on the law in October last year.