BRUSSELS, Belgium (CU)_The European Union on Monday defended its alarming Coronavirus vaccine programme, which has been criticised not just by the World Health Organisation and former member Britain, but also by its current member states, in the recent days.
Stalled vaccine deliveries from producers and a rusty rollout by member states capped the ‘fiasco’ on Northern Ireland last week, with a hasty U-turn on plans to control COVID vaccine exports from the bloc.
Over the last weekend, the European Union attempted to trigger an emergency provision in the Brexit deal which could have seen checks at the border of Ireland and Northern Ireland to prevent vaccine shipments entering the UK.
However, the decision was reversed, following widespread criticism from London, Dublin and Belfast, and although the UK government kept a low profile on the issue, British media had a feast, depicting the EU as untrustworthy.
“These are things which happen when you are working at full speed to deal with a developing situation,” European Commission spokesman Eric Mamer said.
“We have a saying only the pope is infallible. Important thing is that you recognize them early on — in this case so early that it was before the decision was finalized — and that you correct them,” he said.
All these concerns over vaccine shipments were owing to the fact that the rollout to the 27 member states of the bloc is lagging far behind nations such as the United Kingdom and Israel, and even its own delivery plans.
Critics say one of the main reasons for the delays is that the European Commission started to secure contracts much later that other countries. AstraZeneca for instance, which is in a dispute with the EU over deliveries, said Britain was in an advantageous position since it made a deal a few months earlier than Brussels.
Meanwhile, it is also reported that the EU got good prices for the vaccines, prices which the member states could not have obtained on their own. For instance, last month, South Africa said it will have to purchase doses of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine at a price more than 2 times higher than most European countries.
South Africa’s deputy director general of health, Anban Pillay, said a lower price was quoted to European countries since the bloc invested billions of dollars to help speed up research and increase production capacity.
However, speed in itself has been the issue within the EU in the recent days, with Italy even threatening court action against producers when deliveries started flagging.
It has been no different in larger member states of the bloc, such as in Germany, where only 1.93 million people had received their first dose, in a nation of 83 million.
“There were good reasons why we were slower,” Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters after a meeting held between the German state governors and representatives of the pharmaceutical industry on Monday. The Chancellor cited several examples including EU’s decision to require regular approval for the vaccines in order to help boost confidence in the shots, instead of providing faster emergency authorization as happened in Britain.
Despite the recent setbacks, the EU remains confident that member states can achieve the commission’s goal to vaccinate 70 per cent of the adult population across the bloc by the end of the summer, since the EU as an institution has a massive stake in the success of the vaccine rollout in order to show the importance of cooperation and countering those who say it is irrelevant.
