Eliminating COVID

saving European Green Deal

online conference / December 17th 2021

For more information on the conference please contact:
Dr. Mateusz Piotrowski
President of Europe, a Patient Association
contact@europeapatient.com

Leaders in science, politics and religion create a cross-partisan plan to eliminate COVID and save the European Green Deal

Europe is now the global epicenter of the COVID pandemic – with widespread virus
transmission including of the new omicron variant. By failing to solve the COVID crisis
the EU risks becoming incapable of leading the Bighting against the climate crisis. That is
why leaders in science, politics and religion across the political spectrum are appealing
to European decision makers to introduce recommendations to eliminate COVID in
Europe and make the best use of the European Green Deal to ensure a socially just transition for all.

The plan will be presented at a press conference organised by Europe, a Patient Association on Friday December 17th at 1.30pm CET.

The press conference was attended by:

1. Coordinator of the Security Task Force of the Vatican COVID Commission,
Alessio Pecorario
2. Co-President of the Greens Group in the European Parliament, Philippe
Lamberts
3. Member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, Jeffrey Sachs
4. Former Italian Minister for European Affairs, Rocco Buttiglione
5. Director of Climate Action Network Europe, Chiara Martinelli
6. President of the New England Complex Systems Institute and World Health
Alliance, Yaneer Bar-Yam
7. University of Kent and Research-Aid Networks, Jeremy Rossman

Key recommendations to be presented at the press conference:

1. Europe cannot rely solely on vaccines in the hope that this technical measure
will spare us the effort of dealing with the root causes of the present crisis.
2. The EU has to implement COVID elimination strategies based on a broad set
of preventative measures throughout society to make Europe and the world
COVID free.
3. An Intergovernmental Panel on COVID and on the prevention of new pandemics
has to be created, just like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
4. The European Commission needs to support lifting the patents on the
COVID-19 vaccines via the WTO TRIPS.
5. Long COVID, with more than 100 victims worldwide, has to be recognised as a
threat to Europe’s resilience, economy and the wellbeing of its citizens.
6. Due to the disastrous effects that “living with COVID” approaches have on public
health, economy and public trust – a virus elimination strategy should be implemented
with a supplementary temporary income to get populations onboard
with implementing elimination strategies.
7. To avoid backlash the European Green Deal has to be ambitious and transformative
in both environmental and socio-economic terms – the Birst step
being the consigning all fossil fuels to history, while strengthening workers’ codetermination
and protecting poorer member states and poorer social strata.

Recommendations

The recommendations were created during a workshop titled Healing Patient Europe, organised by by Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, Europe, a Patient Association, on October 7th and 8th 2021, at the Vatican. This workshop was attended by leaders in politics, economics, science, and faith, including Chancellor and President of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, Msgr. Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, Secretary for Relations with States (equivalent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Prof. Stefano Zamagni, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, President of the European Climate Foundation, Laurence Tubiana, Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet, Richard Horton, Former EU Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Integration, László Andor, economists Mariana Mazzucato and Pavlina Tcherneva,  Vice President of the European Trade Union Confederation, Esther Lynch, Economy of Francescoand Antonio Spilimbergo of the International Monetary Fund, Luigino Bruni, Scientific Directof of The Economy of Francesco, and Philippe Lamberts, Co-President of the Greens Group in the European Parliament.