To think that the EU have done more to endorse Brexit in the last 2 weeks than the UK managed in nearly 5 years

[Butterflyfluff]

I’ll start by saying I’ve never thought Brexit was in the long term interest of the UK and still don’t

But dear God, the EU’s behaviour over vaccinations and, in particular, the blatant prejudice around the Astra Zeneca vaccine has done more to endorse the UK leaving than anything that has been said in the UK before, during and after the vote

@FatCatThinCat

And Britain is greedy. Your own Prime Minister said it.

He wasn’t talking about vaccine procurement success

Read it again if you care so much about his comment. At least get context right.

VDL head is now on the line with the EU parliament giving her until the second quarter to fix this utter mess.

The El Pais summarised well the predicament.

It turns out the problem in the EU is not just limited to AZ production, but one of distribution as well. Many member states claiming that the distribution is unfair. If you take into account the split within the EU about the export ban with Belgium, Netherlands and Ireland on one side pleading for cool heads to prevail, and assessing the potential damage, versus France, Germany and Italy pushing for an export ban and requisition and seizing vaccines at the ports. We then see an EU bloc overseen by VDL that is not only fractured on policy and distribution, but one that increasingly looks like it is going to force through the action regardless of the opposition within the EU.

At the political level, the EU Parliament is starting to lose patience with its own executive, and could start asking for accountability if the vaccination campaign derails in the second quarter of the year.

“The Commission asked to lead the vaccination strategy without having the powers to do so, and once member states agreed to hand over this power, it has proven incapable of organizing [the campaign],” says an EU source familiar with the situation.

"“The Commission asked to lead the vaccination strategy without having the powers to do so, and once member states agreed to hand over this power, it has proven incapable of organizing [the campaign],” says an EU source familiar with the situation.
Faced with the risk of having her own leadership questioned, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has begun adopting a tougher tone against the United Kingdom"

At least the press in Spain seem to have the measure of the situation today.

english.elpais.com/society/2021-03-22/astrazeneca-fiasco-undermines-eu-strategy-to-beat-coronavirus-health-and-economic-crisis.html

@FatCatThinCat

And Britain is greedy. Your own Prime Minister said it.

Tsk. A greedy cost price vaccine?

Maybe if the EU had achieved similar they could throw a few stones. But it looks like Britain has engaged its capitalist instincts to create a mass market vaccine Oxford and AZ.

It’s interesting that in the elpais article it mentions countries within the EU like Austria who bought little Pzfizer and mostly AZ , are now complaining to Brussels about unfair vaccine distribution presumably as they are getting little pfzier ( not having ordered much) and the countries ( presumably Germany ) that did order it in large quantities are saying no to sharing it with other countries as they ordered it first. Similar argument the EU is making to the U.K. ?!

Yes exactly sasha The EU seem to be failing on all fronts. A botched contract procurement campaign. They choose the vaccines for political reasons (French and German ones were prioritised) When the French vaccine failed, they ended up with a shortfall.
The vaccines that are arriving, are not being shared out equitably according to member states.
Meanwhile some countries are storing millions of vaccines and not using them (France) and other countries are rightly getting very upset.

Italy has now become the EU maffia and has taken to stealing vaccines that were intended for covax and poorer nations, and you really have an absolute shit show on your hands. In every sense of the word.

It is totally unbelievable.

Covax is interesting. So, WHO, CEPI and Gavi along with UNICEF are operating it (PAHO in the Americas). From the article below, it appears that the UK has indeed pledged US$735 million. Germany has pledged US$1.095 billion. The European Commission's pledge is €1 billion. It seems that 'Team' EU have altogether pledged €2.2 billion to Covax between them. Or is that €3.2billion along with the European Commission's pledge? That isn't clear to me. The US seems to have pledged the most for a single country at $2.5 billion (but 4 billion in asterisks?).

So, the aim seems to be to deliver 1.3 billion doses to 92 low and medium income countries before the end of 2021. However, they don't seem to be pledging anything from their own supplies as the US gave the largest pledge but has an Export ban in place.

www.who.int/initiatives/act-accelerator/covax

www.statista.com/chart/24244/donations-to-covax-by-country/

I guess every country and body likes to blow their own trumpet.

The European Commission is committed to ensuring that everyone who needs a vaccine gets it, anywhere in the world, and to promote global health. This is why together with partners it has helped raised almost €16 billion since 4 May 2020 under the Coronavirus Global Response, the global action in support of universal access to tests, treatments and vaccines against coronavirus and for the global recovery. Team Europe's contribution was as follows: EU Member States (€3.1 billion), European Commission (over €1.4 billion) and EIB (almost €2 billion pledged in May and €4.9 billion pledged in June).

ec.europa.eu/international-partnerships/news/eu-doubles-contribution-covax-eu1-billion-ensure-safe-and-effective-vaccines-low-and-middle_en

This is the Corona Global Response;
global-response.europa.eu/index_en

It wasn't the British gov't who insisted on the cost price element. That was the Oxford team who developed the vaccine. However, there are concerns that this 'at cost' element could possibly be dropped from this July or whenever AZ decides the pandemic emergency is over.

@Cailleach1

It wasn't the British gov't who insisted on the cost price element. That was the Oxford team who developed the vaccine. However, there are concerns that this 'at cost' element could possibly be dropped from this July or whenever AZ decides the pandemic emergency is over.

Actually it was both I think and AZ have pledged cost price in perpetuity to low income countries

Has the EU done similar, greedy or not? They are good at restricting access to the hard work of others. That’s greedy.

It has not. The AZ vaccine was supported by the British Government at cost, stored easily and a truly worldwide vaccine. That’s a good achievement.

@Cailleach1

It wasn't the British gov't who insisted on the cost price element. That was the Oxford team who developed the vaccine. However, there are concerns that this 'at cost' element could possibly be dropped from this July or whenever AZ decides the pandemic emergency is over.

How about a source for this as it seems likely after the EU have made such a mess that their costs for AZ will be huge.

Serves them right, bloody idiots. Pick a fight with a low cost vaccine, place pressure on manufacturing and then...

Oh the cost went up. It costs the EU more.

It's really not complicated. Since January, 10m doses have been exported from the EU to the UK. 0 doses have gone the other way. The UK exported ZERO doses to the EU.
The EU is the largest exporter of vaccines in the world. The UK are profiting at the expense of everyone else.

Why wouldn't the EU seek to limit export of vaccines to the UK, who are vaccinating 40 year olds at low risk while EU countries have unvaccinated 80 year olds? They'd be mad to do otherwise.

www.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/blog/coronavirus-trials-of-the-oxford-vaccine/

A key element of Oxford’s partnership with AstraZeneca is the joint commitment to provide the vaccine on a not-for-profit basis for the duration of the pandemic across the world, and in perpetuity to low- and middle-income countries. In the end, logistics might prove more important than efficacy.

@jellybellybanana

It's really not complicated. Since January, 10m doses have been exported from the EU to the UK. 0 doses have gone the other way. The UK exported ZERO doses to the EU. The EU is the largest exporter of vaccines in the world. The UK are profiting at the expense of everyone else.

Why wouldn't the EU seek to limit export of vaccines to the UK, who are vaccinating 40 year olds at low risk while EU countries have unvaccinated 80 year olds? They'd be mad to do otherwise.

You need to look at the contracts

Bah - the EU have

Barely funded any vaccine development
Negotiated all its vaccine contracts so that they would be suborned to English law
Failed to exploit the fact that Pfizer are available to generate vaccine in its customs borders
Made a series of threats to pharma companies
Asked the Italian military police to raid supply companies for vaccines
Triggered the NI Protocol by accident
Failed to distribute vaccine in an even handed way across its members
Begged the United States for Pfizer
Failed to invest in manufacturing capacity
Failed to licence vaccine in production facilities in the factories in EU MS
Seized vaccines due to go Australia

But it had written a grabby law that will come into effect on Thursday so that they can penalise any country with a better vaccine record to have their deliveries prevented in line with contractual law.

Finally, ROW is looking at the EU as they hurtle towards a trade war as they destroy the supply chains that will intersect with them

Since January, 10m doses have been exported from the EU to the UK. 0 doses have gone the other way. The UK exported ZERO doses to the EU.

Neither the EU or the UK are exporters of vaccines, the pharmaceutical companies within their borders are and are meeting their contractual obligations by exporting vaccines to customers. The EU is not benevolently giving us vaccines, we have bought and paid for them and have a good contract.
The EU needs to stop blaming everyone else for their poor vaccine program. Perhaps if they stopped threatening to block exports and employed a little diplomacy they might be closer to getting some cooperation.

All those above who state that the U.K. is ‘greedy’ because it hasn’t exported any vaccines are demonstrating ignorance of the basic law. The issue is not so much where a vaccine is produced or where its components come from but who owns it and what that owner does with it. In the western world companies are free within certain parameters to produce and sell their goods freely to whoever they wish. The U.K. like any other country was free to contract with the producer of vaccines to purchase them. It did that. After that it’s a simple matter of contract law between the parties to the contract. Now the fact that the EU isn’t happy with its contract and is angry that Astra Zeneca isn’t performing under it has nothing to do with the U.K., just as AZ’s contract with theU.K. is no concern of the EU. Democratic states are usually extremely unlikely and reluctant to interfere with private contracts and commerce, let alone threaten to purloin private assets and factories ( and presumably require forced labour on pain of imprisonment from the workers!) because that makes it unlikely that such manufacturers will in the future want to base themselves in that state.
The issue is that the EU didn’t agree as good a contract as the U.K. did and also failed to back the vaccines that turned out to work and delayed ordering in the amounts needed as it tried to negotiate low rates. Ironically the AZ vaccine is one of the cheapest but the PR within France etc was such that they now hold stocks that won’t be used because they have created such public mistrust. That’s unfortunate but it is a distraction to suggest that it is the UKs fault. The EU has sought to deflect criticism of its own failings by lashing out. It is a poor spectacle. I would prefer to have remained in Europe, but the massive management and diplomatic failures demonstrated in this saga have illustrated the flaws.

lex That is a long shopping list of failures from the EU

May I add to it?

• Member states tomorrow will raise in a crisis meeting being held in Europe that not only are there too few vaccines arriving, but they are also being unfairly distributed.

Many countries, several in fact, headed by Austria claim that there is discrepancy and lack of fair play with the vaccine distribution and are insisting it is rectified. With some countries sitting on millions whilst people die in the country next door.

• The export ban of vaccines has split Europe down the middle, German, France and Italy supporting the ban with VDL used as a mouthpiece.

Netherlands, Ireland and Belgium all sounding the alarm about the danger of doing the ban and interfering with the supply change. The latter group struggling to be heard, and the EC is ploughing on anyway seemingly.

• The vaccine procurement was supposed to signal the success of the bloc, and showcase to the world and the member states the competence of the EU commission, ready for the next stage when Macron pushes hard for further health, financial and military integration.

This was supposed to be the sounding board, and what a flop it has been. What a disaster both for the lives of the Europeans, and the shocking PR shit show that is really not showing a united Europe at all.

• In amongst this, despite the millions of Uighurs being tortured and imprisoned in camps in China, the EU are still going to sign up to a new mega deal with them! That is how much they care about human rights and the lives of others.

Is it me or is Merkel really losing her grip? She no longer seems in charge of herself or events. Reversing her lockdown decision for Easter is very uncharacteristic, and I am beginning to wonder what is wrong with her.

It is most definitely time for the MN classic:

When someone shows you who they are....

It's interesting. When there are claims about the EU exporting vaccines, it's not the EU, it's about the law.

When the EU enforce the law that the UK signed up to, it's not about the law, it's the nasty bullying EU...

@HannibalHayes

It's interesting. When there are claims about the EU exporting vaccines, it's not the EU, it's about the law.

When the EU enforce the law that the UK signed up to, it's not about the law, it's the nasty bullying EU...

Which part of the contract are you referring to?

@HannibalHayes

It's interesting. When there are claims about the EU exporting vaccines, it's not the EU, it's about the law.

When the EU enforce the law that the UK signed up to, it's not about the law, it's the nasty bullying EU...

What law is that then? That we signed up to?

Oh dear, I really can't be arsed with so much stupid...

@HannibalHayes

Oh dear, I really can't be arsed with so much stupid...

Haha what a get out

Nothing then?

@HannibalHayes

Oh dear, I really can't be arsed with so much stupid...

Ah, you definitely win your argument with that incisive reply!

But seriously @HannibalHayes, you said we had signed up to an EU law. Now, given that we are not in the EU any more, I'm a little puzzled by that?

Which law is it?