Both the Czech Republic and Hungary, and the EU as a whole, have been struggling with their vaccine roll-outs.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held Thursday a trilateral summit meeting with Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Jerusalem to discuss cooperation in the research, development and production of vaccines.

Prime Minister Netanyahu at the statements with the leaders:

“This is a delight to welcome two close friends, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary and Prime Minister Andrej Babiš of Czech Republic. When I say close friends I mean that, both close personal friends but also leaders who’ve made their countries even greater friends of Israel than before,’’ Netanyahu said.

‘’We appreciate the fact that they’ve opened up missions in Jerusalem and also that they assist us on the international stage as true friends do. In the spirt of that friendship, they came here to Jerusalem to see how we can cooperate on COVID,’’ he added.

Netanyahu said they discussed a number of ideas including  exchanging green passports ‘’as we’ve done with several countries already.’’

‘’It would be an important addition to add Hungary and the Czech Republic to this but equally to see how we can involve both Czech Republic and Hungary in the international plant that we want to build here in Israel for the production of the vaccines of the future,’’ the Israeli premier said.

Israel has given the two recommended doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech shot to over 4 million of its 9.29-million population, while both the Czech Republic and Hungary, and the EU as a whole, have been struggling with their vaccine roll-outs.

Last week, Israel agreed to create a research and development fund with Austria and Denmark to develop and produce future-generation coronavirus vaccines.