After an extensive presentation by the Legal and Technical Secretary, Vilma Ibarra, and the Minister of Health, Carla Vizzotti, the Bicameral Legislative Procedure Commission approved the DNU that modifies the vaccine law and that will allow the acquisition of vaccines for pediatric use against the coronavirus. “This is not going to the corner to make a purchase from the warehouse, they are very arduous negotiations that involve very important issues for Argentina and in which the interests of the Nation were always taken into account,” said Vilma Ibarra, who was the The main person in charge of responding to the different questions of the legislators of Together for Change. The opposition, for its part, took advantage of the commission debate to redirect the objective of its criticism, going from denouncing the lack of an agreement with Pfizer to denouncing the “procedure” that was being used to negotiate with the North American laboratory, that is: a DNU instead of the parliamentary debate in Congress. “The timing of the Congress is not foreseen for these emergencies,” reiterated the Legal and Technical Secretary, and explained that it was “urgent” to start having a vaccine approved for pediatric use, such as the one from Pfizer, to immunize children and adolescents. adolescents with comorbidities.
“The only option to contract vaccines with US laboratories was the modification of the law, so we began to work with the modifications of the legal framework to see if we could make the entry of some clauses compatible,” Vilma Ibarra began in the Bicameral Commission of Procedures Legislative. Accompanied by Carla Vizzotti and the presidential advisor Cecilia Nicolini, the official appeared before the senators and deputies that make up the commission to defend the modifications to the vaccine acquisition law included in DNU 431, signed by President Alberto Fernández last week . “The objective of having an updated standard of the legal framework will allow satisfying the progress in bilateral contracts with laboratories and with the possibility of continuing to expand the windows of the COVAX mechanism and donations,” added VIzzotti, who announced that, since the publication of the DNU In the Official Gazette, the national government had been moving forward to generate agreements with different North American laboratories. Specifically: the 2.5 million doses promised by the Joe Biden government, as well as the doses from the Covax fund.
During the meeting, one of the main topics of debate between the opposition and the civil servants revolved around the decision to apply via DNU the changes in the Vaccine Law 27,573. “Why was a Decree of Necessity and Urgency decided? Because there is a need and there is an urgency. And because a month ago the Pfizer vaccine was approved for pediatric use for children from 12 to 17 years old and it is important to have this vaccine when before to immunize children and adolescents with comorbidities, “Ibarra emphasized, explaining that, in the context of a pandemic, it was necessary to make” immediate decisions “to protect” the life and health of the population. ” “It is a disparagement of the legislators themselves. I should apologize,” said the head of the JxC interblock, Luis Naidenoff. “I have enormous respect and affection for Senator Naidenoff, but I expressed myself in good faith: in emergency situations it is very difficult to reconcile the times of Congress with emergencies and that is why there is an article in the National Constitution that makes it possible to dictate DNUs” replied the official.
On the other hand, during the session of last Thursday, JxC had proposed to debate a project that proposed to eliminate the word “negligence” as an assumption of responsibility of the laboratories, a point that ended up being included in the DNU and that the opposition used as an argument to question the refusal of the Frente de Todos to deal with the modifications in Congress. “Passing the law would not have served in the negotiation. The word was one of the obstacles, but it was not the only one,” explained Ibarra, who clarified that if that had been the only claim “everything would have been easier.” In effect, the DNU also includes the creation of a “Covid-19 Repair Fund” – which will be responsible for the payment of compensation in the event that a person is harmed by the application of the vaccine -, as well as modified the list of assets with sovereign immunity that were exempted from being executed (excluding from this list state assets of private domain and royalties owed to the National State).
This last point, referring to state assets that could be subject to an embargo in the event that there was a dispute between the government and the laboratory for non-payment, also raised some controversy. Particularly from the radical Chubut deputy Gustavo Menna, who tried to install the idea that the new legal framework offered as a guarantee the hydrocarbon royalties of the provinces. “These royalties in no way include those of the provinces, but they are royalties charged by the Argentine Republic. This is a fund constituted by the national State to which the national State is a debtor, and what sovereign immunity was removed is from the royalties received by the national State, “replied Ibarra, categorically denying that the DNU put at risk the royalties received by the oil provinces for their natural resources.
Final step
Once the officials withdrew, the legislators began the committee debate on the treatment of the DNU which, despite the opposition of JxC, managed to be approved thanks to the comfortable majority of the FdT. At the end of the discussions, the head of the FdT in the Senate, José Mayans, who is not part of the commission, took the floor to chicane the opposition, challenging them to “beat us once” by ratifying the DNU in the Chamber of Deputies ( and not in the Senate as always happens since the ruling party has its own majority there). “If you want, you can treat this DNU on the premises and approve it. Hopefully you win us,” he provoked, although, finally, he ended up announcing that next week it would be the Upper House that would approve the presidential decree.
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