EU publishes crisis procurement handbook drawing on COVID-19 lessons
The EU’s new handbook turns COVID-19 lessons into practical guidance for crisis procurement and preparedness.
The European Commission has published a new EU Crisis Procurement Handbook, providing a step-by-step guide for securing vaccines, treatments, diagnostics and other medical countermeasures during health emergencies.
The handbook draws on lessons from COVID-19, when the EU developed joint purchasing arrangements for scarce supplies. Those procurements also raised difficult legal questions, notably around transparency and access to contracts, which subsequently featured in several court cases.
It explains three EU-level procurement approaches: joint procurement, purchasing by the Commission as a wholesaler, and procurement on behalf of member states. The handbook stresses that procurement is also important to secure production of medical countermeasures before a crisis, ensuring supplies are more readily available when emergencies occur. Two of the procurement approaches outlined can and are used outside of public health emergencies.
The EU’s response to the COVID pandemic was made on the hoof, with some criticizing it at the time as slow and inadequate for the scale of the crisis. The handbook is a useful summary, hopefully enabling Europe to act faster, harness collective purchasing power and avoid member states competing for scarce supplies in a crisis.