The Commission proposes additional funding to support global vaccination and to respond to global emergencies

The European Commission has proposed to amend the EU Budget 2021 to provide additional support to policy areas which need reinforcement in view of recent developments and additional needs. Concretely, this Draft Amending Budget 6 will help speed up global vaccinations. It will provide an additional €450 million to reach the €1.3 billion which are needed to secure an additional 200 million doses of vaccines against COVID-19 for low and middle-income countries through COVAX, as announced by President von der Leyen in her State of the Union speech. This Draft Amending Budget 6 also proposes reinforcing the EU Civil Protection Mechanism with €57.8 million. The funds foreseen in the budget to address emergencies need to be increased to cover the costs of the response to the emergencies and natural disasters which occurred last summer, including repatriation flights for EU nationals based in Afghanistan, operations in Haiti following the recent earthquake and fighting forest fires in Europe. The Draft Amending Budget needs to be approved by the European Parliament and by EU Member States in the Council. A Q&A with more information is available here.