Foreword
Foreword by the Chair of the Management Board
I am delighted to introduce the Consolidated Annual Activity Report 2020 summarising the work ECDC carried out last year, the one we will all remember as the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, in 2020, the ECDC Management Board continued focusing on how ECDC delivered within its mandate, amended work plans, and allocated resources to non-pandemic issues too.
In 2020, one big achievement from the perspective of the Management Board was the finalisation of the Board’s conclusions and recommendations related to the third external evaluation of ECDC. Since these recommendations were approved in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and reflected the early lessons learned from it, the Management Board expressed its expectation to the Commission to present a proposal on amending ECDC’s mandate.
Another achievement was the approval of the ECDC Strategy 2021-2027 in June, as the Board considered it essential to ensure that the relevant elements from the third external evaluation would be taken on board. The Board is confident that the approved Strategy will guide the Centre to focus its efforts on the selected priority areas. This will be further facilitated by the Strategy Implementation Roadmap and related Key Performance Indicators, approved by the Management Board in November.
As the focus of ECDC work in 2020 was to support EU Member States and the Commission on their response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Management Board met five times to discuss and approve an amended Single Programming Document (SPD) 2020 and related budget.
I am impressed that the Centre was also able to produce non-COVID-19 related outputs (n=102), despite being in Public Health Emergency (PHE) mode since January 2020 and moving most of the technical experts away from their everyday work towards working on the pandemic. Non-COVID-19 related outputs included
- Thirty-two annual epidemiological reports and three surveillance reports;
- Two rapid risk assessments and one rapid outbreak assessment;
- Two systematic reviews and one technical guidance;
- Ten technical reports and 51 publications in peer-reviewed journals.
During the summer of 2020 ECDC performed an external strategic and performance review on its response to the COVID-19 pandemic which was an important undertaking. The Management Board discussed the recommendations in its November meeting, and trusts that ECDC will further enhance its way of working in future pandemics as it has done during this one.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the value of ECDC as a reliable provider of data, risk assessments, and options for actions has been widely acknowledged. However, the early lessons learned suggest that this might not be enough and therefore the European Commission put forward a legal proposal to strengthen the mandate of ECDC to better contribute to the preparedness and response support in the EU and beyond.
At the time of writing, discussions on the legal proposal are still ongoing in the Council and the Parliament. The entire ECDC Management Board will continue to follow these discussions to see how the strengthened ECDC will take shape.
Dr Anni-Riitta Virolainen-Julkunen
Chair of the ECDC Management Board
25 February 2021