"We have to establish clearer rules for cross-border cooperation in the health sector and better communicate on both sides of the border. My CoR opinion will seek to encourage the EU to create a system based on good practices and incentives to improve cross-border cooperation, in particular in times of acute cross-border health threats." - Olgierd Geblewicz, President of West Pomerania Region and the EPP-CoR Group made these remarks during a territorial impact assessment (TIA) on Cross-border health threats.
During the meeting, Geblewicz who is the rapporteur for the opinion on 'Cross-border health threats and the new mandate of European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC)' shared experiences from Westpomerania on coping with the COVID-19 crisis. He said "In the first wave of the pandemic, our regions faced strict regulations regarding crossing borders, which created serious problems for the Polish and German health workers and doctors working on both sides of the border. We faced shortages in medicines and did not have a cross-border platform that allowed us to be better prepared and to exchange devices or medicines. It is not wrong to say that the pandemic showed the limitation of the current mechanisms for cross-border cooperation."
Andrea Ammon, Director, of ECDC who participated in the meeting welcomed the proposal on the new mandate saying that it takes into account issues and difficulties met during the last months. She added that the proposal aims to help the EU to be better prepared for the next period of the pandemic whilst clarifying and intensifying the mandate of ECDC. She spoke on the need to give due attention to collection of key data such as hospital capacity. On preparedness plans and hospital preparedness Ammon said "We have asked member states to review preparedness plans and hospital preparedness but we also need to find better ways in supporting countries."
Speaking on the importance of TIAs in policy making, Geblewicz said that TIAs help to improve the territorial perspective of CoR opinions by enabling CoR rapporteurs to have access to relevant analysis and information. TIAs also enhance the quality of EU policymaking by ensuring that the territorial impacts of new policy proposals and existing EU legislation are taken into account by the EU institutions. In this regard he said that this meeting would be useful for his opinion that will be presented for discussion and adoption in NAT commission and final adoption in the CoR Plenary session of 5-7 May 2021.
The proposal for a regulation on serious cross-border threats to health (repealing Decision No 1082/2013/EU), as a building block of the European Health Union, proposal intends to provide for a stronger and more comprehensive legal framework within which the Union can react rapidly and trigger the implementation of preparedness and response measures to cross-border threats to health across the EU. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that the EU’s mechanisms for managing health threats suffer from general shortcomings that require a more structured Union-level approach if we are to deal better with future health crises.