I voted in favour of this report as it contains proposals that must be immediately deployed to create minimum conditions for mobilising cash reserves in the European Structural and Investment Funds to tackle the crisis. The quasi-unanimous support that the report gathered shows how the European Parliament can act united in the interests of the European citizens when it comes to alleviate the effects of this unprecedented crisis. The report contains provisions to modify three legal acts aiming at allowing Member States to make use of those regional funds (ERDF - European Regional Development Fund, ESF - European Social Fund, CF - Cohesion Fund and EMFF European Maritime and Fisheries Fund) that are still unspent to accelerate investments related to the COVID-19 outbreak.
In agreement with the Council these measures will take immediate effect in all Member States, but these are only a small part of what should be done to reinforce the response mechanism. It is of utmost importance that the European institutions take urgently decisions to temporarily modify the existing framework in support of the real economy, with particular attention to SMEs and microenterprises’ working capital and addressing also investments in research and innovation in public health-related services. I am spending much of my political influence to propose further measures especially to commissioners Gabriel and Breton, because there is the need to take stronger action to help the economic sectors that are hardly hit by the measures taken in most of Member States to contain and suppress the virus.
More specifically, I am calling for the establishment of a fast-track initiative to coordinate the activities that all researchers, Universities, research centres, enterprises, European partnerships and joint undertakings (such as IMI and Clean Sky) can do (and are partially doing) to help finding solutions for medical treatments and development of vaccines. On a more industrial side, I esteem necessary and urgent the softening of the legal framework for authorisation practices and intellectual property requirements, in particular regarding medical devices, sanitary and protection equipment.
As a matter of fact, we are all realising the need to shorten the value chains for specific product categories that are considered strategic for the European interests. We shall ask for the establishment of a Common investment and purchasing mechanism, which could be an important first step in that direction. This mechanism should be able to use the existing warehouses and count on permanent industrial capacities in order to fund, assist and reorganize strategic product lines (e.g. ventilators, valves, masks, medical devices, etc.).