Article - Coming up in Parliament: vaccines, EU-UK deal, recovery

On Tuesday the environment and public health committee will discuss with European Commission representatives the vaccine contracts concluded by the EU as well as the progress on the authorisation of vaccines.

On Monday, the international trade committee starts examining the deal on the future EU-UK relations concluded on 24 December 2020. The international trade committee and the foreign affairs committee will hold a joint debate on Thursday. Other committees (transport, fisheries, economic affairs and internal market) will also discuss the impact of the deal in their respective policies.

Even if the agreement is being provisionally applied from 1 January, Parliament needs to give its approval for it to enter into force on a permanent basis.

The economic and monetary affairs committee will vote on Monday on a provisional agreement with the Council on the establishment of the Recovery and Resilience Facility. The €672.5 billion facility is the main instrument under the EU's recovery plan and is designed to help EU countries tackle the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The civil liberties committee votes on Monday on whether to endorse an agreement with Council on measures to prevent the dissemination of terrorist content online.

On Monday the culture and education committee votes on agreements reached with the Council on the functioning of three EU programmes for 2021-2027: the Erasmus+ exchange programme; Creative Europe, which supports culture and the audiovisual sector; and the European Solidarity Corps, which promotes volunteering in the EU.

The environment comittee holds a public hearing on Thursday to look into the risk of a mass extinction of species on the planet. MEPs will also discuss how the EU biodiversity strategy for the next decade can address the problem.