Parliament discussed the COVID-19 outbreak with the Commission and the Croatian presidency today, underlining the need to curb it from spreading across Europe.
On Monday, all member-states in the Union reported cases positive for this virus.
Stella Kyriakides, EU Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, was quoted as saying today that "COVID-19 was a public health emergency that is changing by the hour."
She called on member-states to focus on containing the virus to slow down its spread, so that health systems can cope and the impact on the economy and social life is limited as much as possible.
On behalf of the Croatian presidency, Foreign Ministry State Secretary Stella Kyriakides said that the presidency was working on a coordinated and coherent response to the health, economic and social effects of the spread of the virus.
She informed the EP of the steps taken in the past five weeks so as to define a coordinated response at the level of the EU.
The EP president David Sassoli said on Tuesday he was in self-isolation at his Brussels home as a precaution after having travelled to Italy over the weekend.
The Brussels meeting of the EP was chaired today by Vice-President Mairead McGuinnness.