The Palace of the Nation, Brussels (Photo from www.fed-parl.be)
Belgium, through its embassy in Manila, assured on Thursday the availability in supply of its COVID-19 vaccine Pfizer and J&J Janssen for the Philippines and other countries.
In the note verbale furnished to THEPHILBIZNEWS sent by the Embassy of the Kingdom of Belgium, the Belgian Federal Public Service Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation disclosed the new procedure for requesting an export license to export COVID-19 vaccines outside of the European Union (EU).
The entirety of the note verbale read as follows:
The Federal Public Service Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation presents its compliments to the diplomatic missions, consular posts and international organizations established in Belgium and has the honour to inform them about the new procedure to request an export license for the export of COVID-19 vaccines outside of the European Union.
Following the publication of the European Commission Implementing Regulation 2021/111 on 30 January 2021, companies are required to request an export license before each shipment. This measure has been adopted with the purpose of enhancing transparency in vaccine delivery and will be in place until 31 March 2021. For a list of the exports that are not subject to the measure, the Federal Public Service Foreign Affairs refers to paragraph 5 of the Implementing Regulation: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal- content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32021R0111&from=EN.
The Belgian Government takes pride in the fact that Belgium is the home of the production facilities of some of the world’s most renowned pharmaceutical companies and will spare no effort to ensure that within the framework of this new procedure, these companies will be able to fulfil their contractual obligations towards third countries and the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines will not be interrupted.
The competent authority to grant the aforementioned export license is the Federal Public Service Economy, SMEs, Middle Classes and Energy. Companies can electronically submit a request via the e-mail address becovid@economie.fgov.be. According to the European Commission, the country where the final manufacturing handling of the vaccine is done before it is shipped to its destination, is responsible for granting the export license. As such, Belgium is responsible for granting export licenses for COVID-19 vaccines manufactured by Pfizer and soon also Johnson & Johnson. Export licenses for exports of vaccines from other suppliers shall be dealt with by other competent EU Member States.
The requesting company will receive a decision on the granting of an export license within 72 hours after a complete request has been submitted through the abovementioned address. In this timeframe, the request will be processed by both the Belgian Federal Public Service Economy as the European Commission. Our national authorities are in constant communication with suppliers Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson to streamline procedures and to continue to guarantee a smooth and swift treatment of the requests.
Suppliers Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson are best placed to provide you with specific information on their license requests. Within the Federal Public Service Foreign Affairs of Belgium.
The Federal Public Service Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation avails itself of this opportunity to renew to the diplomatic missions, consular posts and international organizations established in Belgium the assurance of its highest consideration.
