In an interview with the Cyprus News Agency’s Evie Mitsidou Phillips and asked about her experience during her first year as Commissioner, Kyriakides said that despite Cyprus being a small country within the European family as EU Commissioner for Health she was called on “to manage a very big crisis,” and spoke of the great responsibility she felt since “this is the greatest public health crisis in the last hundred years.”

Kyriakides assured that “we are working very hard, continuously, on a daily basis without taking into account bank holidays or the holiday season.”

Throughout, “we have never let go of our determination or faith that we can pull through,” adding that “our one concern is the protection of European citizens.”

The European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety outlined a series of actions the European Commission has launched in order to support states and protect the health of European citizens amid the pandemic, starting from an early warning system launched on January 9, 2020 and activating funds for research on this new coronavirus disease to establishing a European team of epidemiologists, boosting the sector of health with €2.7 billion to providing member states with necessary equipment such as ventilators and protective masks and deploying medical teams from all over Europe to hospitals in need.

She also spoke of a continued stream of daily contacts between the 27 Ministers of Health, international partners such as G7 and G20, the World Health Organisation, pharmaceutical companies, vaccine developers, as well as third countries which manufacture medicines or other medical equipment and which had imposed restrictions in exports “so that we could guarantee that there would be no extensive shortages in the European space.”

“We amended legislation, removed levies on medical equipment, passed regulations on diagnostic tests and contact tracing, published guidelines for containing infections,” she said.

The European Commission, she noted, “launched countless actions to support member states and to protect the health of all European citizens.”

Asked whether she believes results would have been better if the response of member states was coordinated from the beginning Stella Kyriakides recalled that “we are talking about an unprecedented situation, not just in the European space but worldwide.”

“One can always say in hindsight what could have been done differently,” she noted, pointing out however that much has been learnt from the pandemic.

On the basis of the lessons learnt, “we presented our proposal for a stronger European Health Union,” something she said that the majority of European citizens has called for.

The European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety spoke of the Commission’s vision which concerns “laying the foundations on which we will build our relevant actions.”

“Our goal is to strengthen our systematic cooperation so that it can be stronger, more coordinated, more stable and more effective, thus guaranteeing an enhanced readiness and response,” she noted.

Asked whether she believes there is political will among the EU 27 member states for a Health Union she replied that there is a provisional agreement with the European Parliament and the Council “which proves that the European Health Union is becoming a concrete reality.”

According to Kyriakides EU4Health “is the most ambitious funding programme for health in our history and will be the spine of the European Health Union.”

With a budget of €5.1 billion, she pointed out, “it will contribute crucially in enhancing our readiness to deal with crises and to manage inter-border threats against health, as well as in strengthening EU health care systems overall.”

“A new chapter for the EU health policy is opening and it sends a clear message that public health constitutes a top priority for us,” she stressed.

Asked what it signified for a small state like Cyprus that the EU has arranged for vaccines to be available for its member states, Kyriakides said that it was decided that the EU would follow a common European approach together with the 27 member states because as she puts it “together we are stronger.”

“The European Vaccines Strategy marked our intention for an enhanced European Health Union,” she noted, adding that this decision which was taken together with all member states is “particularly important for smaller EU states such as Cyprus, because it shows that at a crucial moment states did not look out for themselves nor did larger and stronger states get favourable treatment.” It was, she pointed out, “an act of true European solidarity.”

Asked what reply she would give citizens who are worried over fast-track procedures in the manufacturing of vaccines and the possibility of adverse reactions on people she explained that the EU strategy on vaccines which was launched on June 16 aimed to speed up the development, manufacturing and supply of vaccines.

“This goal has been achieved,” she said.

Vaccine development, she said, “is a complex and time-consuming procedure which usually lasts about 10 years,” adding that “through our strategy we aimed to make them available in less than six months.”

She assured however that as with every vaccine, these vaccines have undergone and will continue to undergo “rigorous scientific review before they are available in the market and even afterward.”

Invited to reply to criticism that the EU was late in this respect in relation to other countries she recalled that the pandemic “is not a war between states but rather of humanity as a whole against the virus.”

According to Kyriakides “it would be wrong to have an approach of ‘who did it first’ because, as we have repeatedly said, no one is safe until we are all safe.”

“For us in Europe, the safety and effectiveness of a vaccine is more important than speed,” she stressed.

She explains that the procedure which has been decided together with the 27 member states seeks to guarantee the long-term safety of vaccines, since the European Medicines Agency has a long track record in safeguarding this safety in Europe.

The conditional licence granted by the EU demands submitting and checking more data than the provisional license granted for example by other countries, she said.

She assured that the EMA “is working around the clock so that the vaccines which will be made available will have met all the conditions set.”

If people are not able to trust the procedure followed then the vaccine will not be successful, she pointed out, adding that “if we have learnt something from this pandemic is that if health is not safeguarded first, then neither can our countries’ economies prosper.”

Asked about the importance of the “From farm to fork” strategy for future sustainable development and particularly for Cyprus she replies that it is a “very important both for Cyprus and Europe as a whole because it has to do with transforming our way of production, distribution and consumption of food, which must improve so that our health and the environment are protected.”

Kyriakides noted that our ambition is to increase EU farm land which is organically cultivated by at least 25%.  “We know it is an ambitious goal but change and improvement cannot be achieved if there is no vision,” she says.

Cyprus, she pointed out, “has much to gain if it invests” in this.

“Sustainability as the new trademark of Europe will open new business opportunities,” she said.

Source: Cyprus Mail