Human crisis preparedness or Big Pharma’s dream factory budget?
The EU’s new Health Emergency Response Authority (HERA) is a noble project on paper: it is tasked with preventing, detecting and responding to cross-border health threats – in short, ensuring that the next pandemic doesn’t hit Brussels with its pants down.(Public Health)
But when you look at the numbers and the surveillance, the picture quickly becomes less noble.
The Commission has allocated HERA a €6 billion dedicated budget for 2022-2027 from the EU Multiannual Financial Framework and the NextGenerationEU recovery package.(uemo.be)
At the same time, it advertises that through other EU programmes ”supporting HERA’s activities”, the total package will reach almost €30 billion(European Commission).
This is more than the combined annual budget of all EU agencies – but unlike the agencies, HERA does not appear at all in the Court of Auditors’ annual report on the agencies.(European Court of Auditors)
This analysis looks at what HERA really is, where the ”30 billion” comes from – and why the worst problem for democracy is not just the amount of money, but who decides and who sees nothing.
Context: what HERA is – and what it is not
HERA (Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority) was established in autumn 2021 as part of the so-called ”European Health Union” in the immediate aftermath of the COVID crisis(European Parliament).
By Commission decision, HERA is not an autonomous EU agency but an internal Commission service – a centralised structure operating under the Commission in two modes: ’preparedness’ and ’crisis response’(Public Health).
This is an essential detail:
- TheECDC (the Agency for Communicable Diseases) and the EMA (the Medicines Agency) are separate EU agencies with their own budgets and are reported on separately by the Court of Auditors.
- HERA, on the other hand, is an internal Commission department whose expenditure is absorbed into the Commission’s overall account – without the same visibility at agency level.
At the same time, HERA’s powers are exceptionally broad. Its remit includes ”horizon scanning” of threats, advance procurement of medical countermeasures (vaccines, drugs, diagnostics), securing production capacity and setting up crisis financing mechanisms(Public Health).
In other words: HERA is the actor that will decide in future ”health emergencies” what to buy, from whom and on what timetable – and with what public money.
Evidence: where does the ”30 billion” come from and who is in control?
6 billion or 30 billion?
The Commission explains the funding of HERA at two levels:
- €6 billion 2022-2027 directly for HERA (MFF + NGEU).(uemo.be)
- In addition, around €24 billion ”through other EU programmes” for actions supporting HERA’s objectives, bringing the total package ”to almost €30 billion”(European Commission).
These other programmes include EU4Health, Horizon Europe and rescEU, which fund health research, crisis stocks and production capacity – partly in line with HERA priorities.(template.gov.hr)
It is important to note: the €24 billion is not an ”additional pot” to be decided by HERA alone, but a politically linked financial framework for HERA. Yet the practical effect is the same: HERA influences where a significant slice of EU health and research funding goes.
Where are the Court of Auditors’ reports?
The EU Court of Auditors publishes a separate report on EU agencies every year. The 2024 report looked at 43 agencies with a combined budget of €5.3 billion – but did not mention HERA.(European Court of Auditors)
There is a technical explanation for this:
- HERA is not an agency but an internal service of the Commission, so its finances are managed as part of the Commission’s own budget line(Public Health).
But politically this is a problem. When you build an internal super-authority around the Commission, with a total package of up to €30 billion, it is not treated as an agency with a separate budget and audit – it is subsumed under the general heading of the Commission.
Individual MEPs have already raised concerns about HERA’s transparency and independence, and its possible overlap with the EMA and ECDC(sciencebusiness.net).
General culture of governance: ’Pfizergate’ as a backdrop
The overall picture is not helped by the fact that the EU Commission has already received a sensitive note from the courts in the so-called Pfizergate case.
In May 2025, the EU General Court overturned the Commission’s decision to refuse to disclose text messages exchanged by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen with the CEO of Pfizer during negotiations on the EU’s giant vaccine deal(Transparency International EU).
The Court found that the Commission’s explanations for the lack of messages were insufficient and that such ”informal” messages are also covered by the transparency rules. The crux of the case was precisely how billion-dollar contracts are negotiated – and how easily these negotiations disappear from the official record.
As the same Commission builds itself an internal super-authority to manage future crises, it is not unreasonable to ask: have we learned anything?
Analysis: the HERA EU-level ”permanent crisis machine”
HERA concretises a trend that the EU has been pursuing for years: crises and emergencies are becoming a permanent form of governance.
- First, a massive debt and recovery framework (NextGenerationEU) is created, through which the EU will take on an historic amount of common debt(European Commission).
- Then, on top of this framework, a permanent health emergency infrastructure will be built to channel billions of euros into crisis preparedness, vaccines and medicines – largely to the same global corporations that have already been in court over transparency.(ScienceDirect)
At the same time, the EU Court of Auditors has warned that the level of ”material and widespread” spending errors in the EU’s actual budget rose to almost €11 billion in 2023, with a sharp increase in suspected fraud cases.(The Times)
HERA sits uncomfortably well in this picture:
- A large container of money, the total size of which is difficult to perceive.
- The internal structure of the Commission, whose audit is not treated as a separate entity at agency level.
- A crisis framework, which in practice means rapid decision-making – meaning less normal political and public control.
When you combine these three factors, the question of critics like Gerald Hauser, ”what happens to taxpayers’ money?” is not a populist throwaway, but an obvious concern.
Consequences: what does this mean for Member States and citizens?
- National health policy trickles down to Brussels
HERA’s logic is to centralise crisis preparedness and procurement of medicines at EU level. This can make response more effective in some situations, but at the same time it shifts decision-making power away from national parliaments and health ministries – especially if an EU-level ”state of emergency” can be declared at a low threshold. - The crisis machine needs crises
When an organisation’s mandate, budget and existence are justified by emergencies, there is a structural incentive to see the world through the lens of ongoing crisis. It does not mean a conspiracy, but it does mean that ”normal conditions” are not an attractive space for this machine. - Big Pharma’s bargaining position further strengthened
HERA’s core business is ”medical countermeasures” – in practice vaccines, drugs and production capacity. The same companies with which the Commission has already failed in transparency will continue to be HERA’s natural adversaries.(ScienceDirect) - The structure of supervision is behind
The Court of Auditors is already concerned about the level of budgetary errors in the EU and the growing common debt.(The Times)
Yet HERA has not been built around the same transparent and differentiated reporting as the EU agencies – even though it has more money than all the agencies put together.
Conclusion: the 30 billion question
It is true that technically HERA is not an ”unchecked Wild West”. Its expenditure is included in the Commission’s general budget, which is audited annually by the Court of Auditors(Public Health).
But this is not enough.
When the EU builds an internal supervisor operating on a virtual €30 billion financial envelope, the least we could ask for would be:
- a separate, easily traceable budget line
- an annual, public and individualised audit report
- a clear distinction between what is HERA’s own decision-making power and what is funding for other programmes limited by legislation
Now HERA operates in a grey area: technically as a Commission department, politically as a super-authority, financially at the crossroads of tens of billions of euros.
In that setting, Hauser’s call for ”total transparency” is no exaggeration – it is the minimum level that should apply whenever one bureaucratic structure gets its hands on more money than the budgets of all EU agencies combined.
As long as this does not happen, HERA will inevitably look like what it looks like to the critic: an internal EU crisis and vaccine factory with more question marks in its budget than public lines.
📊 What do the numbers really mean?
- EUR 30 billion / 2022-2027
– Around €5 billion per year. - Per citizen
– 30 bn € / ~450 bn inhabitants ≈ 67 € per EU citizen for the whole period, about 11 € per year. - Comparison with EU agencies
– All 43 EU agencies have a combined budget of €5.3 billion in 2024 – less than the annual level of HERA(European Court of Auditors).
These figures do not yet tell us anything about whether the money is well spent or badly spent. They only tell you the scale: we are talking about a structure equivalent to the annual spending of a whole small member state – and yet with a control model built as an internal Commission service, not as a transparent EU agency.
📚 Sources
- European Commission: HERA – getting ready for future health emergencies (IP/21/4672)
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_21_4672(European Commission) - European Commission: Communication COM(2021) 576 final – HERA Incubator
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52021DC0576(EUR-Lex) - Science|Business: Commission launches health emergency authority with promise of €30B funding
https://sciencebusiness.net/news/commission-launches-health-emergency-authority-promise-eu30b-funding(sciencebusiness.net) - European Parliament Research Service: HERA, the EU’s new Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (EPRS Briefing, 2022)
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2022/698941/EPRS_BRI(2022)698941_EN.pdf(European Parliament) - CEPS: Improving the mission, governance and operations of the EU HERA (In-Depth Analysis, 2023)
https://cdn.ceps.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/CEPS-In-depth-analysis-2023-01_Mission-governance-and-operations-of-the-EU-HERA.pdf(cdn.ceps.eu) - European Court of Auditors: Report on EU agencies 2024 – News summary
https://www.eca.europa.eu/en/news/NEWS-SAR-AGENCIES-2024(European Court of Auditors) - General Court of the EU, Case T-36/23 – Stevi and The New York Times v Commission (”Pfizergate”)
Description of the judgment: https://transparency.eu/pfizergate-eu-court-upholds-transparency-standards/(Transparency International EU) - The Times: EU warned over €11bn spending ’irregularities’ as suspected fraud rises
(referenced news)(The Times)