Charles Michel, who was speaking to journalists after a visit to the Paz Flor vaccination center in Luanda, accompanied by the Minister of Health, Silvia Lutucuta, stressed that the European Union wants to work closely with its partners in Africa at a bilateral level, but also with the African Union and pointed to covid-19 as one of the main challenges.
"We need more vaccines around the world. That is why the European Union has mobilized 2.5 billion euros to support the Covax initiative [international mechanism to facilitate access to vaccines], provide doses to the whole world and increase production," said Charles Michel, declaring himself "impressed" after visiting the Angolan vaccination center, where he highlighted the level of organization.
The President of the European Council also supported the idea of facilitating access to vaccines, defended this week by the President, João Lourenço, who at a summit of Portuguese-speaking African Countries (PALOP) called for solidarity from international partners to help the African continent recover from the damage of the global health crisis and correct asymmetries in the supply of vaccines.
"We advocate for more pharmaceutical sector industries in Africa, this is a priority for the African Union and the European Union is also fully available to be mobilized and is in favor of this approach," he stressed.
"We are working with the European Investment Bank and I have been talking to African leaders to make this a reality as soon as possible," he added.
For Charles Michel, accelerating vaccine production is important for both Africa and Europe because it would also mean diversifying supply, so there is "political will" for cooperation between governments and the private sector.
"We need to learn the lessons from this covid-19 crisis and have put on the agenda the idea of a possible treaty on pandemics to prevent, exchange information and react more quickly at the international level," he further pointed out.
Asked whether it would be important to lift the patents on vaccines against covid-19, the European official stressed that, even if the intellectual property issue was solved, "it would take months or years to produce vaccines around the world," because this is not a normal and easy to produce product.
He therefore favored a third way, proposed by World Trade Organization Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, to develop partnerships between governments and the private sector: "This is what we are doing to create more factories and increase the pace of production around the world, especially on the African continent.
Charles Michel, who will be received by João Lourenço, said he intends to address with the Chief of Executive the challenges facing the country and the African continent, such as economic development and support for the private sector.
Other topics should also be discussed, such as security, stability and peace in the region.
"We want to work together with Angola and the African Union to see how we can support all the efforts in this direction. This is an important challenge and we will not be able to overcome the obstacles if we do not all work together," stressed the European official, defending a "multilateral approach" and the strengthening of ties between partners.
The European leader also hopes to take stock of cooperation with Angola and stressed the EU's support for the Angolan government's reforms, namely in the economic and social fields.
