The Commission welcomes the Council position at first reading, which paves the way for an early second reading agreement.
The European Parliament proposed amendments to the proposal, essentially modifying the legal base to Article 43(2), and introducing new implementation dates to ensure enforcement in time for the vaccination season. None of those amendments were controversial.
However the interinstitutional discussions on the question of correlation tables blocked any progress on the proposal. With regard to the request for a correlation table for the present proposal, the Council is opposed to it.
Given the delays in the adoption of the proposal due to the inter-institutional debate on the issue of correlation tables, the Council intends to postpone the proposed dates of adoption and publication of the national laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary to comply with this Directive and of application of those provisions. The Commission accepts this postponement which stays compatible with the next vaccination season.
In light of the limited number of amendments proposed to an existing Directive transposed in national law since a decade, and the resulting easy check on their transposition, the Commission can accept that no provision on correlation tables is inserted in this Directive.