The European Union should send coronavirus vaccines to its Balkan neighbours and do more to combat the virus in Ukraine, 13 of the EU’s foreign ministers said in a joint letter to the bloc’s executive on Wednesday.

Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Sweden said the EU would not be safe from COVID-19 until countries on its borders could also recover from the pandemic.

“We strongly support the efforts and initiatives by member states and the European Commission to share the vaccines from the allocated contracts with the closest EU neighbours, such as the Western Balkan countries,” the ministers said in the Jan. 6 letter, which was made public.

“At the same time, we believe that the EU has to go beyond the current initiatives and give similar attention and support to other EU neighbors – the countries of the Eastern Partnership – if they wish so”, the letter said.

EU countries launched a mass COVID-19 vaccination drive on Dec. 27, but Balkan nations - poorer than EU member states - have not been able to negotiate the same access to COVID-19 vaccines with drugmakers. Other neighbouring governments have no clear schedule for their national inoculation programmes.

The European Commission said it received the letter and would reply to those governments, telling reporters in a regular news briefing that it was looking at ways to help Balkan countries and other neighbours, including Georgia and Ukraine.