Question for written answer E-006723/2020 to the Commission Rule 138 Juozas Olekas (S&D), István Ujhelyi (S&D), Vilija Blinkevičiūtė (S&D), Olivier Chastel (Renew), Elisabetta Gualmini (S&D), Bronis Ropė (Verts/ALE), Maria-Manuel Leitão-Marques (S&D), Magdalena Adamowicz (PPE), Milan Brglez (S&D), Attila Ara-Kovács (S&D), Manuel Pizarro (S&D), Sara Cerdas (S&D), Cindy Franssen (PPE), Viktor Uspaskich (Renew), Biljana Borzan (S&D), Alex Agius Saliba (S&D), Margarida Marques (S&D), Barry Andrews (Renew), Ulrike Müller (Renew) Subject: The Commission’s most recent plans to strengthen European health and the European Health Union The Commission has recently taken historic steps to strengthen Europe’s health. To ensure that these solutions reach and benefit every EU citizen, we would like to hear the answers to the following questions: 1. In addition to the contracts that have already been concluded, the Commission is negotiating some more Advance Purchase Agreements for COVID-19 vaccines. The diversity of safe vaccine technologies within this portfolio is essential for European citizens. How will the Commission make sure that all vaccine technologies become available to European citizens, including the inactivated vaccine candidates? 2. How will the recently issued health initiatives guarantee cross-sector synergies in Europe? What ‘balancing’ procedures have been envisaged to make sure that the initiatives respond to patients’ needs and address the significant health problems in different fields such as infectious diseases, non-communicable diseases and preventive care? 3. The Commission has also announced the creation of a separate Health Emergency Response Agency under its European Health Union package. Does the Commission envisage any cooperation with the US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA)? Will the newly established Health Environment Research Agenda for Europe (HERA) build on the lessons learned from the US BARDA approach/system, such as creating a list of priority biological threats and/or sharing the costs of developing medical countermeasures against these priority threats? PE662.464v01-00.