The resumed meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) on the pandemic instrument has initiated negotiations in a working group and other informal discussion to push for consensus.
A working group was constituted to discuss Articles 4 and 5 i.e. on pandemic prevention and surveillance. Further, Germany has convened an informal meeting to discuss issues around Article 7 dealing with health and care workforce.
The resumed session started without an open plenary and directly took up Articles 4 and 5 for discussions in the formal drafting group, where all Member States participate.
Co -Chair Mr. Roland Driece in his opening remarks described the process of the INB Bureau to arrive at consensus on the current draft text. He said that the idea is to go through the provisions of the text and get feedback from Member States but they would not be allowed to insert or change texts in the Bureau’s text from the floor of the drafting group. Instead, if there are issues that need to be discussed with respect to the text of each provision, those could be raised in the drafting group and then informal consultations or working groups would be mandated to try to deal with those issues.