Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen are travelling to Israel on Thursday. They will have a summit with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at 16:00 on the issue of vaccines and advancing a jont initiative to build a facility for the research, development and production of vaccines.After the meeting, the three leaders will issue statements to the press. Netanyahu and Kurz will visit a gym in Modi’in to observe how the green pass works.

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said Austria and Denmark would work with Israel on vaccine production against mutations of the coronavirus and jointly research treatment options, according to press reports.

The two countries no longer want to be ‘’only’’ dependent on the EU for vaccines.

Kurz and Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen plan to visit Israel on Thursday to discuss “an international corporation for manufacturing vaccines,” Netanyahu was quoted by Reuters as saying.

The Austrian leader said it was right that the EU procures vaccines for its member states but the European Medicines Agency (EMA) had been too slow to approve them and he lambasted pharmaceutical companies’ supply bottlenecks.

The European Commission said member states were free to strike separate deals should they wish to. “It’s not that the strategy unravelled or it goes against the strategy, not at all,” an EU Commission spokesperson said.