The COVID-19 pandemic and war in Ukraine have highlighted the dependence of the European Union (EU) on individual trading partners. One of the tasks of the European Commission’s new Directorate-General, the Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA), established in 2021, will therefore be to contribute to the EU’s “open strategic autonomy” by identifying and eliminating import dependencies in the field of pharmaceuticals. HERA’s work thus aligns with current EU efforts to reduce concentrated import risks. Here, three aspects of this work are particularly important: the identification of dependencies, the development of strategies to overcome them and the incorporation of these strategies within global health governance. …read more
Source:: German Institute for International and Security Affairs