Special Committee on the Covid 19 Pandemic

Today is the constitutive meeting of the new Special Committee on the Covid 19 Pandemic "Lessons learned and recommendations for the future" in the European Parliament. The committee will work for one year and take on the task of writing a report on the Corona pandemic.

Katrin Langensiepen Member of the Special Committee for the Greens/EFA Group, Vice-Chair of the Social Affairs Committee and of the Disability Intergroup comments:

"As a representative for many persons with disabilities and pre-existing conditions, I particularly want to bring to light the human rights violations against persons with disabilities and pre-existing conditions in this committee.

Much has not gone well in this pandemic and is still not going well. Covert, silent, official triage but also lack of assistance and care, catastrophic conditions in institutions or even lack of accessible information and assistance had devastating consequences for many people. Our task now is to draw conclusions from this so that the EU is better prepared for the next pandemic.

We need to raise the voices of at-risk groups, promote deinstitutionalisation and ensure that people with disabilities are always systematically involved in crisis management.

The new special committee is wrongly called "Lessons learned" . But the pandemic is not over. We are working on the situation while the virus continues to circulate. But how do we deal with risk groups today? Mask requirements are being lifted and people are being isolated.

What about long covid patients? Similar to fatigue syndrome, many are now unable to work and participate in daily life. How prepared are Member States when it comes to large numbers of workers who will be unable to work? Children who will no longer be able to attend school due to LongCovid. How can we support more research? These are also questions and issues that we need to address."