The European Commission has launched BE READY, a new European Partnership designed to strengthen research on pandemic preparedness across the EU.
The initiative is intended to improve the EU’s ability to anticipate, prevent and respond quickly to epidemics and pandemics by supporting research on emerging and re-emerging pathogens — disease-causing organisms that are new or returning — and by speeding up the development of diagnostics, treatments and vaccines, the Commission declared in a statement on Tuesday.
€120 million will be made available from the EU’s Horizon Europe research budget for the partnership, Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation Ekaterina Zaharieva said.
Commissioner for Equality, Preparedness and Crisis Management Hadja Lahbib said the partnership is intended to help people access medicines, vaccines and other tools faster during a crisis.
How the partnership will work
The partnership will focus on aligning national research priorities among participating countries and improving coordination through a shared strategic and research agenda, according to the Commission.
It will also support multinational research through joint calls for projects, a process that allows national and European funders to coordinate backing for studies on emerging and re-emerging pathogens and related work on diagnostics, treatments and vaccine development.
BE READY is coordinated by ANRS – MIE, a French research agency, and brings together 81 organisations from 27 countries.
The partnership was prepared through two EU-supported coordination actions between 2022 and 2025 with a total budget of €3 million, and more than €1.8 billion has been invested in pandemic preparedness research through the EU research and innovation framework programme since 2020.
