The European Union’s efforts to build a medical stockpile and strengthen health crisis preparedness face a major challenge: a blind spot over national reserves. Many member states are reluctant to share information due to security concerns.
Five years after COVID-19 was declared a global emergency, attempts by the EU to increase medical stockpiles to improve crisis response are stymied by lack of clarity over what individual countries have in reserve.
“Stockpiling of medicines is considered a national security issue in many member states so the information is classified because it can reveal some weaknesses,” Laurent Muschel, Director General at Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (DG HERA) told Euronews.
If a country lacks protection against a specific health threat – whether a pathogen or a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) risk – it could expose vulnerabilities that adversaries might exploit.
“The EU is building a stock of strategic countermeasures for which we need to consider both the European and national stock,” he added.
To be better prepared, the Commission will put forward a strategy on medical countermeasures against public health threats. This will include tools such as joint procurement and a broader EU stockpiling plan.
This strategy will complement the Critical Medicines Act, set to be presented later this month, which focuses on preventing medicine shortages and securing supply chains.
“One way to approach it for me is to look at the different threats and threat by threat look at what is necessary at European level and what is necessary at member state level,” Muschel said.
He said that DG HERA is currently working with each member state to assess threats and set targets, deciding how much should be covered at the EU level and how much should be the responsibility of individual countries.
Better prepared for future pandemics
Despite these challenges in preparedness, Muschel – whose own agency was created after the COVID-19 pandemic – is confident the EU is “much better prepared than five years ago” to confront a health crisis, and that regular testing of emergency protocols ensures that the lessons of COVID-19 are remembered.
According to Muschel, the greatest current risk to the EU is avian flu.
“With regular cases of human infections in the US and the risk of mutation leading to human-to-human transmission, we consider it the biggest threat,” he said, stressing the need for readily available vaccines.
“So far, the cases have been only from animals to humans, but the more people are getting infected, the more there is a risk of mutation,” he said.
As the majority of avian flu cases are in the US, another challenge emerges as the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and limit international communication.
“That’s the role of the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention to inform the rest of the world on how the epidemiological situation evolves,” Muschel said.
“I remember that President Trump was criticising China for not being transparent during COVID-19 so I do hope that the United States will not do a similar mistake and that the flow of information will continue”.
