The EU has responded to the COVID-19 emergency by ensuring the timely production and distribution of vaccines. However, the pandemic has highlighted the need for Europe to be better prepared for future health emergencies.

The EU’s biggest health programme, EU4Health, well reflects this need: protecting citizens from cross-borders health threats is among its objectives. EU4Health has, thus far, dedicated half of its budget to crisis preparedness.

In addition, in September 2021, the Commission also set up the Health Emergency preparedness and Response Authority (HERA) to improve Europe’s ability to rapidly respond to such crises, and to make vaccines available to European citizens.

Financed by HERA’s annual work plan for 2022, the Commission, in cooperation with the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA), is launching the EU FAB call – an unprecedented call for tenders.

With a yearly budget of €160 million, the call will ensure that sufficient and agile manufacturing capacities for different vaccine types are kept operational and can be activated quickly in case of a public health emergency.

The call is open to pharmaceutical companies and companies developing and manufacturing medicines through a contract (Contract Manufacturing Organisations - CMOs) that are based in EU or EEA countries, have manufacturing sites in the EU and have a sufficient manufacturing capacity to guarantee the number of doses reserved/to be manufactured.

Budget: 160 million, euro

Deadline: 03/06/2022 16:00 CEST

As part of the first step, interested parties can submit a request to participate by 3 June. To access the second step of the procedure, economic operators will have to successfully meet the selection and exclusion criteria.

Info session

The Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW), the European Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA) and HaDEA are organising an info sessionSearch for available translations of the preceding link on the call on 17 May 2022 | 10:00 CEST.

Register now.