Nathalie Loiseau, MEP La République en Marche (LREM) and former Minister of European Affairs was the guest of “8:30 am franceinfo”, Saturday April 3, 2021. Europe’s slowness on vaccination against Covid-19, contracts with laboratories, health pass … She answered questions from Myriam Encaoua and Ersin Leibowitch.
Vaccination: “Europe started late”
“Europe started late, that’s indisputable”, But “by this summer, Europe will be the biggest vaccine producer in the world”, explains Nathalie Loiseau. “There are two lessons to be learned from this delay from my point of view, assures the MEP. We had not given health skills to Europe and today we regret it. We started to do it with the new budget which has started, we have just given 5 billion euros to Europe but we have to recruit, we have to know how to do it. “
For a very long time many nationalists said: the less Europe takes care of things, the better off we are. Strictly speaking, it was wrong.
Nathalie Loiseauon franceinfo
For Nathalie Loiseau, the second lesson is the lack of a European industrial policy: “Europe ordered, it traded, it bought, but it did not produce”. “Oxford, which has succeeded in discovering one of the vaccines we need, is one of the European universities which has benefited the most from European research funds. When I hear the vaccine nationalism of Boris Johnson say: ‘It is because we When we left the European Union, we got there ‘, it’s the opposite. It’s because Europe had funded labs everywhere. Sometimes the French labs were very timid to ask for European funding. “
“For years, labs have under-invested in research”
“What is clear is that for years, the labs have under-invested in research. I hope that with what happened, we have another perspective”, underlines the MEP LREM. “Several labs have played transparency. The contracts with Moderna, we’ve seen them, Pfizer, we’ve seen them. There is one lab that continues to never clearly answer the questions we ask it, it’s AstraZeneca”, says Nathalie Loiseau. Has AstraZeneca sold the same doses multiple times? The MEP replies that the laboratory has not been able to convince the European Union that this was not the case and that is why it has not stood idly by.
Regarding the Russian vaccine Sputnik V, the MEP explains that if it “is approved by the European Medicines Agency, why not. Especially if we know if it is effective, if it is safe and if we can produce it massively. For the moment we have no answer to these three questions. For the moment Russia is struggling to produce its vaccine. Should it be ruled out for all that?
The health pass, “a way to build confidence”
Will there be a vaccination passport to leave European borders? “As we are working on the circulation of Europeans this summer, because we all want to welcome tourists and travel to Europe, we are trying to work on a health pass that would allow people to travel with confidence. across the territory of the European Union. “
“For the moment we are crossing borders under very restrictive conditions”, notes Nathalie Loiseau. “It’s very heavy, very restrictive. I go to Brussels for work: it’s at least two PCR tests a week. We have to find a way to create trust, to have a document that allows you to say either ‘ I had the Covid, either I was vaccinated with a vaccine recognized by the EU, or I did PCR tests. ‘This is to loosen the constraints and in a country that lives as much from tourism as the ours, I think it is necessary “, Concludes Nathalie Loiseau.
Find the entire “8h30 franceinfo” of Saturday April 3, 2021:
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