About this consultation

Feedback period: 31 March 2021 – 12 May 2021  (midnight Brussels time)

Topic: Public health

Target audience

This consultation concerns the creation of a European Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority. The Commission aims to ensure that the public and all concerned stakeholders can provide their views and input. For this reason, this public consultation is collecting the views of all interested citizens and organisations. Contributions are particularly sought from: citizens; organisations representing patients, consumers, civil society active in public health and healthcare; healthcare professionals and healthcare providers; public authorities; businesses and their associations (for instance representatives of the pharmaceutical industry, medical devices and personal protective equipment manufacturers, digital companies, healthcare service providers, hospital and care deliverers, health insurances) researchers, academia; international actors; and environmental organisations.

Why we are consulting

In the 2020 State of the Union address, President Von der Leyen called on Europe to draw lessons from the COVID-19 crisis and build a European Health Union, including a ‘European BARDA – an agency for biomedical advanced research and development’. It would support EU capacity and readiness to respond to cross-border threats and emergencies, whether of natural or deliberate origin. Following this, the Commission announced the adoption of a legislative proposal for 2021 on the creation of a ‘Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority’ (HERA). In order to ensure that all possible views are considered in the process and to ensure transparency and accountability, the Commission invites all interested individuals and stakeholders to share their views and experiences. These contributions will help inform the impact assessment accompanying the HERA proposal on four key elements: the problem to be tackled, subsidiarity and the EU dimension to the problem, the policy options and their likely impacts.

Responding to the questionnaire

You can contribute to this consultation by filling in the online questionnaire. If you are unable to use the online questionnaire, please contact us using the email address below.

Questionnaires are available in some or all official EU languages. You can submit your responses in any official EU language.

For reasons of transparency, organisations and businesses taking part in public consultations are asked to register in the EU’s Transparency Register.