If we look back at the past five years, one thing is clear: crises dont come alone, and they dont disappear quickly. Security threats are multiplying. Climate change is hitting harder. Disinformation is spreading. And health threats are ever present, six years after overcoming the biggest of them all — Covid-19.
These crises have taught us one important lesson: we must go from reacting to crises to preparing for them. That is exactly what we are doing. We are building a new era of European preparedness, including for health emergencies.
We are getting everyone on board. Member States, industry, civil society, and EU-wide stakeholders. Everyone working together. We strengthened the ECDC and the EMA, giving them the tools to detect threats earlier and act faster. We are investing in research, production capacity, stockpiles, and public health systems.
This investment needs to continue because todays threats are increasingly complex and fast-moving, such as security and hybrid threats, cyberattacks on hospitals, and biosecurity risks, and antimicrobial resistance, to name just a few.
Some crises continue to get worse in many regions, like the AIDS epidemic. World AIDS Day yesterday reminds us that we must speed up progress to end the epidemic, but also to eliminate discrimination, and close the inequalities of people living with HIV.
As Commissioner for Preparedness and Crisis Response, my job is to keep people safe, and make sure the EU is ready for anything. In just a few months, we have laid the foundations for a stronger, better prepared Union.
We adopted our new EU Preparedness Strategy, a comprehensive plan that takes an all-hazards approach and gets everyone involved, every part of society, and each level of government.
A key part of our Strategy is protecting people and keeping our societies and economies running when a crisis hits. This means keeping businesses open, keeping children learning, keeping hospitals operational, and keeping our supply chains up and running.
That is why we are investing in preparedness. In the next European budget, we have proposed over €10 billion to strengthen our civil protection and health emergency preparedness and response. Investing in preparedness is also strategic because it boosts competitiveness and strengthens our strategic autonomy.
Over the past year, I have met with pharmaceutical industry associations, visited production sites, and spoken with many of you during the HERA Industry Days. You shared your challenges and the exciting opportunities ahead.
These conversations reinforce my conviction that we must invest in our pharmaceutical and biotech industries. It is how we make European science stronger, support our manufacturing base, and secure supply chains, so the next breakthroughs are both discovered and produced here in Europe.
Strong budgets for research, innovation and industrial capacity, through the Competitiveness Fund and Horizon Europe, are key to these efforts.
Being prepared is not the job of institutions alone. It is our shared responsibility, from Member States and citizens to scientists and industry.
We need our business leaders right by our side. Industry has a crucial role in helping prepare our societies and making sure we can respond when the next crisis hits. We saw this during COVID-19. Manufacturers stepped up in a big way, quickly reshaping supply chains and cutting innovation timelines from years to months.
This agility turned Europe into the pharmacy of the world. Now we need to inject this same speed and flexibility into our everyday way of working, not just in emergencies.
This is precisely our goal with our EU Stockpiling and Medical Countermeasures Strategies. To get new projects from lab to market, we are creating an MCM Accelerator that helps developers access EU-wide funding, through grants, procurement, venture capital, or pre-commercial procurement.
European SMEs and start-ups are the engines of innovation for health security technologies. With the European Investment Bank, we are increasing the HERA Invest budget to €200 million to support them. We are also expanding our EU FAB network to cover more types of medical countermeasures and creating RAMP UP, a network of EU-based manufacturers committed to quickly scaling-up production during a crisis.
Joint procurement will remain key to fair access to lifesaving medicines, especially for smaller Member States. EU-wide stockpiles will continue to act as our safety net in severe crises. Together we are making strategic investments in our safety, in our economy, and in the competitiveness of our industry. But we can only succeed together.
We need you on board to invest in the next scientific breakthroughs that will protect us from the next health crisis; to build strong production lines and diversify supply chains, so Europe can produce what it needs, when it needs it; and to make sure every European has access to lifesaving products.
We have seen it again and again: when we act together, Europe is at its best.
