9 June, 2020
Her Excellency
Ursula von der Leyen
President of the European Commission
Dear Ms. President,
At our last meeting in the European Council, some member states emphasised the
need for stronger European cooperation in order to ensure better preparedness in
Europe for future health pandemics in light of the experiences with COVID-19.
Therefore, we are pleased to be able to share the attached non-paper with you on
behalf of Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Spain, France and Poland. The paper
attempts to zoom in on some of the key parameters for building up
EU’s long-term
resilience to contain future pandemics and avoid shortcomings of critical supply.
The ideas include a wide range of measures including accessibility of relevant and
comparable data, stronger and more targeted research and development, common
procurement and cooperation on critical stocks as well as some ideas to strengthen
European resilience in certain, critical supply chains.
We hope that the paper can serve as an inspiration for fruitful, further discussions at
European level on how to ensure the EU’s preparedness for future pandemics.
Yours Sincerely,
Mette Frederiksen, Mateusz Morawiecki,
Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel,
Pedro Sánchez, Sophie Wilmès