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 Many EU countries rely on China, the source of the outbreak, for
drug ingredients, and they are now struggling to avoid shortages
after the epidemic disrupted supplies and delayed shipments.
Protective gear, like face masks, is already in short supply in most
EU countries, officials said, which puts doctors and nurses at risk.
Europe needs to bring medical production back to Europe, because it
relies too much on imports from non-EU countries, officials in
France and Germany, the EU's largest countries, have said.
France imports about 40% of drug ingredients from China, a situation
that the French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire called over-reliance
on Beijing.
"This is not something that will be solved tomorrow, but we must
start this discussion today so that we have a solution after
tomorrow," Austrian Health Minister Rudolf Anschober told reporters
at the meeting in Brussels.
No immediate shortages of medicines have so far been experienced in
the EU because of the epidemic, officials said, but concerns were
mounting after India, the world's largest producer of generic
medicines, restrained some exports.
The bloc already faced shortages of several drugs, including for
respiratory diseases, before the outbreak.
EXPORT BANS
To combat the existing shortage of protective gear, for which demand
has grown exponentially in Europe since the beginning of the crisis,
health commissioner Stella Kyriakides called for "solidarity" among
EU states.
But France, Germany, the Czech Republic and Lithuania have blocked
exports of protective equipment to avoid risks of shortages in their
own territories..
Belgium's health minister, Maggie De Block, called the bans
"paradoxical" and urged to remove them. Other ministers criticised
those measures.
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Italy, the EU country hardest hit by the outbreak, has formally requested help
from other EU states to meet its needs for protective gear.
Italian health minister Roberto Speranza said more needed to be done at EU level
to meet existing needs.
The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, last week began joint
procurement of face masks and other protective gear on behalf of 20 EU states,
but the effort probably won't secure enough supplies before April, officials
said.
EU industry commissioner Thierry Breton said he was confident that EU-based
manufacturers could meet the growing demand for protective gear in the coming
weeks, provided that production was coordinated.
Ministers also discussed measures to prevent the spread of the virus, informing
each other on actions taken at national level.
Free movement of citizens within the EU's open-border Schengen area has so far
not been limited because of the epidemic.
"I believe any measures to limit travel across borders is not appropriate, based
on what we know about the situation of the virus at the moment," German health
minister Jens Spahn said. "If we got a consensus on this today, I would see this
as an important signal."
(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio, Philip Blenkinsop and Jakub Riha; editing by
Larry King)
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