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Emergency Support Instrument - Performance

Programme in a nutshell

Concrete examples of achievements (*)

2 000
medical cargo transport operations
delivered medical supplies from April 2020 to July 2022.
800
medical personnel and patients
were transported from April 2020 to January 2022.
23 million
rapid antigen tests
were purchased, with deliveries starting in February 2021.
10 million
masks for healthcare workers
were distributed to Member States from July to October 2020.
17 000
doctors and nurses
were trained to support and assist intensive care units in 717 hospitals across the EU from August 2020 to May 2021.
2.2 billion
doses of COVID 19 vaccines
were secured for delivery under the programme, which started in December 2020.

(*) Key achievements in the table state which period they relate to. Many come from the implementation of the predecessor programmes under the 2014-2020 multiannual financial framework. This is expected and is due to the multiannual life cycle of EU programmes and the projects they finance, where results often follow only after completion of the programmes.

 

Budget for 2021-2027

(*) Only Article 15(3) of the financial regulation.

Rationale and design of the programme

The instrument is designed to allow for a comprehensive and flexible response to the urgent, evolving and diverse needs that arose during the pandemic. It complements the efforts of Member States, in close cooperation and consultation with them, and is activated only in exceptional circumstances where no other instrument available to Member States and to the EU is sufficient.

Budget

Budget programming (million EUR):

  2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027 Total
Financial programming 231.7             231.7
NextGenerationEU                
Decommitments made available again (*)               N/A
Contributions from other countries and entities 416.6             416.6
Total 648.3             648.3

(*) Only Article 15(3) of the financial regulation.

 

The instrument expired on 31 January 2022 and no commitment appropriations were requested for 2022.

 

Budget performance – implementation

Annual voted budget implementation (million EUR)(1):

  Commitments Payments (**)
  Voted budget implementation Initial voted budget Voted budget implementation Initial voted budget
2021 231.7 0.0 313.6 90.0
2022 0.0 0.0 134.0 8.1

(1) Voted appropriations (C1) only.

(**) The ESI is an annual instrument used to address emergencies. Payment appropriations voted and implemented in 2021 were linked to actions commitments made in 2020 under the previous MFF, ensuring a proper EU response to the health crisis

Contribution to horizontal priorities

Green budgeting

Contribution to green budgeting priorities (million EUR):

  Implementation Estimates Total contribution % of the 2021–2027 budget
  2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027    
Climate mainstreaming 0.2 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.2 0.1%
Biodiversity mainstreaming 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0%
Clean air 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0%

 

Gender

Contribution to gender equality (million EUR) (*):

Gender score 2021 2022 Total
0 224 0.0 224
0* 7.7 0.0 7.7

(*) Based on the applied gender contribution methodology, the following scores are attributed at the most granular level of intervention possible:
- 2: interventions the principal objective of which is to improve gender equality;
- 1: interventions that have gender equality as an important and deliberate objective but not as the main reason for the intervention;
- 0: non-targeted interventions (interventions that are expected to have no significant bearing on gender equality);

- 0*: score to be assigned to interventions with a likely but not yet clear positive impact on gender equality.

 

  • The instrument expired on 31 January 2022 and no commitment appropriations were requested for 2022. Therefore, there was no reporting on gender contribution for the year 2022.

 

Digital

Contribution to digital transition (million EUR):

  2021 2022 Total % of the total 2021-2027 implementation
Digital contribution 44.1 0.0 44.1 19%

 

Budget performance – outcomes

  • The instrument is needs-based, in the context of a quickly evolving pandemic. No performance framework or indicators are prescribed in the legal basis, since the instrument was designed to be maximally adaptable to emerging needs. The breadth of scope and possible interventions, in the context of a quickly evolving epidemiological situation, made for a challenging implementation landscape, also taking into account the limited EU competences in the health domain.
  • The instrument has proven its effectiveness in terms of quickly mobilising resources towards the needs identified in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, it managed to effectively respond to the urgent, evolving and diverse needs of Member States in responding to the crisis. The flexibility enshrined in the legal basis and the mandate given to the Commission to centrally manage the funding, in cooperation with Member States, allowed the prioritisation of those collective actions that could generate more timely interventions and outcomes that could not have been achieved by Member States acting individually.
  • The major focus of the instrument (around 70% of funding) has been on the vaccines initiative, which allowed the conclusion at an early stage of advance purchase agreements with pharmaceutical companies developing COVID‑19 vaccines, providing the necessary investment to advance the scientific progress and production capacities, as a result of which 4.6 billion doses of COVID‑19 vaccines were secured for Member States. Funds were also allocated to vaccine-sharing mechanisms, in order to secure 200 million vaccine doses and auxiliary material in low- and lower-middle-income countries.
  • The instrument allowed individual Member States to engage with vaccine developers to secure supplies, and leveraged the scale of the EU’s investment to reduce prices and obtain contractual conditions on issues such as liability and capacity increase, in order to mitigate Member States’ risks going forward. At the same time, the advance purchase agreements funded by the instrument are by nature risky investments. While the Commission designed a portfolio of contracts with the most promising candidates across a wide range of technologies, there was no guarantee that individual vaccines would be successful or authorised in the EU, or that producers would be able to step up their production at the levels they had committed to.
  • The instrument delivered some 10 million masks to medical staff in the early phase of the crisis, when the pressure on the supply of equipment was at its highest.
  • The programme also allowed all Member States to have access to the therapeutic Remdesivir and to procure and donate over 23 million rapid antigen tests to the interested Member States. It also financed clinical trials to test repurposed medicines, the use of convalescent COVID‑19 patients’ plasma, the EU wastewater monitoring system and the urgent characterisation of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant. All of these initiatives would have been unlikely to be financed in the absence of this programme.
  • In total, over 2 000 operations via air, land or sea have been funded under the mobility package, which provided support for the cargo transport of COVID‑19-related medical items, the transport of medical personnel and the transfer of patients. The transport of more than 515 health workers and approximately 135 patients was facilitated.
  • The instrument provided support for the development of interoperability between national contact tracing apps and the stepping up of testing capacity across the seven Member States that expressed an interest. A total of 9 222 volunteers and professionals have been trained in testing techniques, in addition to the 1 795 mobile testing teams established and 1 263 309 tests conducted. The activities were implemented from July 2020 to the end of September 2021. The instrument financed grants to 24 interested Member States so that they could join the EU gateway for issuing digital COVID certificates as a proof of vaccination, recovery or negative test, between 29 March and 31 December 2021. Additionally, grants to 18 Member States supported the accessibility of tests for the delivery of the digital COVID certificate, for the period from 1 June to 31 October 2021.
  • The provision of training in intensive care skills has proved very successful to increase the regular intensive care unit staff’s capacity to take care of COVID-19 patients. With the collaboration of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine, more than 17 000 professionals were trained in 24 EU Member States and the United Kingdom, in 717 hospitals during the period from August 2020 to May 2021.
  • The instrument has also funded the supply of 305 ultraviolet disinfecting robots to hospitals across the EU, providing efficient and effective solutions to ensure the safety of healthcare environments and their staff.
  • The instrument is unique under several points of view. It was deployed in a rapidly evolving environment marked by uncertainties about the nature of the virus, the appropriate medical response, and both supply and demand. At the same time, however, it was effective in responding swiftly when needed, for example, by providing medical countermeasures (Remdesivir, rapid antigen tests, etc.) in support to Member State needs. Finally, the breadth of scope and possible interventions also required specialised policymaking in the context of an ever-changing epidemiological situation. This is particularly commendable, especially considering the supporting competences of the EU in the health domain.
  • While the instrument has only been operational since April 2020, the European Court of Auditors’ review on the EU’s initial contribution to the public health response (01/2021), published in January 2021, acknowledged the role of the instrument in complementing Member States’ and other EU responses. The Court did not make recommendations but acknowledged that it was a challenge for the EU to rapidly complement the measures taken within its formal remit with additional actions, as public health is primarily a national competence. With regard to the Commission’s financial support to vaccine development, the Court highlighted that the Commission mitigated the inherent risk linked to vaccine development by investing in a range of vaccine technologies and companies.

Sustainable development goals

Contribution to the sustainable development goals

SDGs the programme contributes to Example
SDG3
Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
This activation of the instrument was in its entirety intended to respond to a health crisis.

Archived versions from previous years

Emergency Support Instrument PPS