EU proposes independent probe into Covid-19 origin
The European Union is planning on proposing a mechanism to draw lessons from the coronavirus pandemic at the next meeting of the World Health Organization, including an independent probe into its origins.
The proposal will be tabled at the next meeting of the World Health Organization on 18 May.
In part, the aim is to try to reduce tensions between China and the US due to questions around the origin of the virus and how it was handled.
The EU's foreign policy chief said the bloc's proposal would "provide access to how to learn more about the origin of this disease to prevent the next pandemic. Because it wasn’t going to be the last. Lessons will have to be learned from it."
According to the Guardian, Borrell also said he had not seen the evidence supporting US assertions that the coronavirus may have escaped from a Chinase laboratory in Wuhan.
"I think that when the US president makes such strong allegations against someone, he has information that I don’t have,” he told the European Council on Foreign Relations in an interview.
"I do not think it is the time for blame games or mutual reproach," Borrel added.
"This is the rhetoric we are somewhat hearing in the United States, calling the virus ‘Chinese’, or the ‘Wuhan virus’. I don’t think it is the moment to reproach anybody but instead to join forces against a problem that is everyone’s. If we don’t solve it everywhere, we won’t solve it anywhere."
Yet the EU was reportedly supportive of an independent probe into the origins of the virus.
Nonetheless, in remarks with France’s Le Journal de Dimanche, Borrell reportedly said that it would be best if the probe stepped aside "from the battlefield between China and the United States, who blame each other for the events in a bid that has only exacerbated their rivalry".