“Learned from Corona” – Nehammer: EU woke up about penicillin production

The EU has learned from the Corona crisis and the ‘supply bottlenecks’ that existed at the time, Nehammer (ÖVP) said on Thursday during a visit to Sandoz, during which he also visited the new penicillin production facility.

The Chancellor explained that by “joining forces” it was possible “not only to maintain the production site, but even to expand it.” This was made possible, for example, by a financing system in which the turquoise-green federal government and the European Union acted in a ‘relationship of trust’.

Financial injection from the EU for production plant in Kundl
The European Commission had already approved a financial injection from the federal government for Sandoz in 2020 in the context of the corona pandemic. This year, 45 million euros ultimately flowed to the new production facility in Kundl.

Sandoz has “set a milestone,” Nehammer emphasized. “It has also been proven that penicillin production in Europe can be cost-effective and enterprising,” he explains. In this area, the federal government can only “create the right preconditions” so that innovative companies like Sandoz are “willing to invest”. Sandoz itself had also invested another 100 million euros in the new production facility.

Chancellor: EU must “become more crisis-proof”
When asked, Nehammer does not want to explicitly address the question of whether supply bottlenecks are actually a thing of the past. “But we can further develop security of supply,” he said. The federal government is also working to avoid bottlenecks, for example in the storage of active ingredients. Overall, Austria and the EU need to “become more resilient to crises,” Nehammer noted.