In a letter sent to the Dutch Minister for the Dutch organisations Koepel Gepensioneerden, KBO-Brabant, FASv and NOOM advocate for the European Union playing a more active role in identifying and combating cross-border infectious diseases with an explicit focus on the global dimension. Jointly, they express their concerns about potential future infectious diseases with pandemic threat other than the COVID-19. A threat that is even more real in a context of increased globalisation, climate change, growth of the world population, disruption of ecosystems and intensive livestock farming.
“It is the EU that can play a role at the global level in containment of infectious diseases with a pandemic threat”, they wrote, yet “a common European policy is missing”.
Koepel Gepensioneerden, KBO-Brabant, FASv and NOOM therefore argue for an overarching European health strategy and cooperation in that field and call for Netherlands, in consultation with the EU Member States, to give the European Commission the authority to do so:
“We believe that the Netherlands should have the ambition to strengthen the powers of the European Commission, so that the necessary measures in the medical field (prevention, treatment and prevention) can be implemented in coherence”.
Read the full letter (in Dutch)
