Closing remarks by President von der Leyen at the Global Health Summit

Dear friends,

This morning, I said that we have two great tasks to achieve: to get this pandemic under control and to build a better global health framework to prevent and prepare for future health threats.

On the first goal, the leaders made some important commitments. They made substantial financial commitments. They made in-kind commitments. Team Europe pledged to donate 100 million doses of vaccine until the end of the year. And the European industrial partners – BioNTech-Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Moderna – committed to deliver 1.3 billion doses this year for non-profit to low-income countries and at lower costs for middle-income countries. We are really grateful for that. And on the second goal, I believe that this Summit will go down in history as a milestone in the fight against pandemics. Our multilateral cooperation is the golden thread running through the Declaration. We have agreed to work together to prevent harmful bottlenecks in supplies. We have agreed to use all of the flexibilities provided by the intellectual property system. We have agreed to promote equity and access to vaccines, diagnostics and other medical supplies.

We agree on the importance of closing the ACT-A funding gap and learning from its experience for future efforts. We agree to work together to identify outbreaks more rapidly and with better surveillance. And we must support our people – our healthcare professionals and our researchers – and we must provide them with the resources they need to protect us.

We must give our continued attention to One Health – big topic today – to strengthen evidence-based institutions and to building dialogue and trust with our communities. So I am delighted to declare our joint endorsement of the Rome Declaration.

But let me also remind you that this is only a beginning. Good intentions are not enough. They are important, but not enough. They must be followed by a concrete action. So in a few days from now, the World Health Assembly will take place. Let us take our principles there and share them with the whole world. I would then like to ask the upcoming G7 Summit to put health preparedness on their agenda – we heard today the Chair, the Presidency – so this is very probable. And I am pleased that we are holding ourselves to account by discussing when we meet again in Rome in October, dear Mario.

So thank you very much for hosting this Summit and we are very much looking forward to come with a full agenda in fall to Rome again.

Thank you.