EU4Health call to guarantee a fast response to future health emergencies

The EU has responded to the COVID-19 emergency by ensuring the timely production and distribution of vaccines. However, the pandemic has highlighted the need for Europe to be better prepared for future health emergencies.

The EU’s biggest health programme, EU4Health, well reflects this need: protecting citizens from cross-borders health threats is among its objectives. EU4Health has, thus far, dedicated half of its budget to crisis preparedness.

In addition, in September 2021, the Commission also set up the Health Emergency preparedness and Response Authority (HERA) to improve Europe’s ability to rapidly respond to such crises, and to make vaccines available to European citizens.

Financed by HERA’s annual work plan for 2022, the Commission, in cooperation with the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA), is launching the EU FAB call – an unprecedented call for tenders.

With a yearly budget of €160 million, the call will ensure that sufficient and agile manufacturing capacities for different vaccine types are kept operational and can be activated quickly in case of a public health emergency.

The call is open to pharmaceutical companies and companies developing and manufacturing medicines through a contract (Contract Manufacturing Organisations - CMOs) that are based in EU or EEA countries, have manufacturing sites in the EU and have a sufficient manufacturing capacity to guarantee the number of doses reserved/to be manufactured.

Budget: 160m

Deadline: 03/06/2022 16:00 CEST

As part of the first step, interested parties can submit a request to participate by 3 June. To access the second step of the procedure, economic operators will have to successfully meet the selection and exclusion criteria.

Info session

The Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW), the European Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA) and HaDEA organised an info session on the call on 17 May 2022.

Access the presentations

Fill in the feedback survey

Background

The EU FAB is a network of vaccine producers in the EU and EEA, which will be ready to quickly manufacture vaccines in case of a future public health emergency. Manufacturing capacities will be kept operational during the preparedness phase, in order to guarantee their availability from the start of an emergency. The actions of the network will close the gap between manufacturing and scaling up of vaccine production, while ensuring the capacity of the industry to produce life-saving medicines.

More information about the call

Related links

EU FAB factsheet

Press material on preparedness for the next pandemic phase

EU4Health

Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA)