THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION REPORT. Europe in a period of transition

THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION 96 The EU’s response to the covid-19 pandemic, a time sequence. As we all know, the pandemic began in Wuhan, China, in late 2019. On 31 December 2019, the Chinese Gov- ernment alerted the WHO to the first 27 cases of “viral pneumonia”, attributed shortly afterwards to a new type of coronavirus, detected a few days later in Thailand, Japan and South Korea. China reported the first death on 11 January 2020 and on 23 January, when the death toll had reached 18, it locked down the 60 million in- habitants of the province of Hubei. The magnitude and the rigour of this measure should have set loud alarm bells ringing throughout the whole world, including the EU, but the arrogance of developed Western countries blinded them to the imminence of the disaster that would also crash down upon them. It is inevitable to think that the EU and other devel- oped countries reacted dramatically late to the informa- tion coming out of China. The first case of covid-19 in Europe occurred on 24 January 2020 in France although before that, in the very early days of January 2020, the Commission had begun to activate health alert mecha- nisms. During January and February 2020, the EU began to mobilise instruments to address health emergency sit- uations to fight SARS-CoV-19. However, it was only from 2 March 2020 onwards that the EU began to organise a health response to live up to the existing challenge. On that day, the ECDC raised the risk of covid-19 in the EU to “high” and the Council agreed to intensify the IPCR device (Integrated Political Crisis Response) in the “full activation mode” to organise and mobilise all institutions and areas of the EU (the IPCR was activated from 28 January, but only in “information sharing” mode). President von der Leyen set up a Corona Response Team with three facets: medical, mobility and economy. From then on, all EU activity and institutions were singly focussed on the wide-ranging problems cre- ated by the pandemic. Despite the great interest in finding out about the temporary flow of political initiatives taken by the various institutional players in the EU to control the pandemic and tackle its consequences of all types, limited space prevents us from inserting a chronological sequence of actions on health by the Commission and other EU insti- tutions during the first year of the pandemic. Fortunately, the Commission and Presidency of the Council are pub- lishing a complete time frame of their respective activities and decisions relating to covid-19 since January 2020, so we would refer readers to the Commission 2 and Council 3 website included in these references. The EU’s health response to the Covid-19 pandemic During 2020, the response from the EU and its institu- tions to the Covid-19 pandemic has included multiple actions and decisions that were not only related to health but also fiscal and economic which proved extraordinarily relevant for the stability and normal operation of society and to avoid a very serious economic recession. The health-related initiatives from the EU and its in- stitutions in response to the covid-19 pandemic can be grouped into six major blocks: (1) measures to control the pandemic, (2) strengthening the health sector, (3) research into SARS-CoV-19, (4) European Vaccination Strategy, (5) EU actions for worldwide control of the pandemic and (6) reforms to boost the European Health Union. EUmeasures to control the covid-19 pandemic The highly infectious aspect of SARS-CoV-19, its high morbidity and mortality, lack of treatment and vac- cine overwhelmed the hospitals and, in some places, the mortuary system, obliging governments to put out 2  European Commission. Timeline of EU action. https://ec.europa.eu/ info/live-work-travel-eu/coronavirus-response/timeline-eu-action_es 3  European Council. Timeline: Council actions on COVID-19. https:// www.consilium.europa.eu/es/policies/coronavirus/timeline/