The move would see a new body called HERA, set up by the Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, to be in charge of future health crises. The proposal has already caused the outrage of Germany, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands to ask for a vote on the legislation.
Critics have called the power grab attempt a clusterf and some have called out on the EU executive's coup bids. One EU diplomat told Politico: When authoritarian powers exploit COVID to grab power, we are the first to condemn them, but when the Commission commits a coup? The Commission is urging the EU states to vote on the legislation today, along with the Slovenian presidency of the Council. The rushed decision has sparked suspicion among those who worry that HERA could open a Pandora's box if they sign today.
In normal times, the new body would only be responsible for health coordination. During a Pandemic, it would switch to crisis mode, having the power to procure medicines and raw materials while restoring production capacity to the EU. The proposal is about to set up a mechanism of exceptional crisis-led nature, whose activation is limited in time and has core measures relating to safeguarding supply and avoiding economic disruption in a situation of public health emergency, according to lawyers from the Council's legal service. The Commission is urging member states to increase efforts to detect mutations, as some are still behind almost two years into the epidemic. READ MORE: France turns to the EU Army as the Channel migrant crisis gets out of control.
The bloc has confirmed 42 cases of the new Omicron variant in 10 countries. Commissar Stella Kyriakides said that certain Member States lag behind in this crucial dimension. We may now experience further or additional pressures due to the appearance of the Omicron variant, which is faced with a challenging winter due to the high transmissibility of the Delta variant. Governments around the world are urgently scouring databases for recent cases of COVID- 19 infections, screening travellers and decoding the viral genomes of the new variant as they try to measure how far it has spread. The EU wants to ban the word Christmas as it is 'offensive' INSIGHT Grassroots Conservatives turn on Boris and pick surprising successor REACTIONBLOG Data shows it has been circulating before it is officially identified in southern Africa last week and has been detected in more than a dozen countries. It will take weeks to establish if it is more infectious, deadly or evades vaccines. Britain and other major economies have stopped flights to and from southern Africa just days after the variant was first detected, roiling global financial markets and raising concerns about the economic damage. The government spent months gathering data and assessing its potential danger before imposing a nationwide lock-down in December when the first samples of the Alpha variant were documented in Britain in September 2020.