Brussels has been a target for months due to delays in vaccinating against the epidemic. His plans, announced over the weekend, were to add fuel to the fire to prevent vaccines from being exported. Epidemic fatigue is increasing in Europe, but restrictions are only tightening, and while new viral variants must be vaccinated in a hurry, vaccine manufacturers are scaling back shipments. The European Commission will act harshly after the delay, but after internal criticism, it has also been hit by foreigners due to export restrictions, and President in person Ursula von der Leyen. The size of the vaccine blockade at the inner Irish border had to be withdrawn by the Post Office.
European Union delayed
The world is learning new words: vaccine economics, vaccine nationalism, vaccine warfare. It is a matter of political and economic tension in Europe that production of the coronavirus vaccine is slow, its distribution is opaque and, above all, it is only flowing into the European Union. Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, is locked in a struggle over the backlog and hasty measures. Vaccines are scarce and restrictions imposed on the European Union economies are being tightened by the emergence of rapidly spreading viral variants. Paris bans travel between France and countries outside the European Union as of midnight, with the German ban, which came into effect on Saturday, and covers five countries: Brazil, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Portugal and Ireland.
At the end of the week, news seemed like a chilly blow that new vaccines from Novavax and Johnson & Johnson had proven effective in South Africa, where a highly contagious version of the virus had spread.
Governments are also competing with new pathogen variants. Economists at ING wrote in their monthly forecasts that major regions of the global economy are unlikely to out of sync with the crisis – the Eurozone and Central Europe may be lagging, although a strong recovery in the second quarter is still likely. On Friday, despite relatively good quarterly GDP data, stock markets on the continent closed their worst week since October.
According to Our World in Data, lagging behind the European Union, which centrally regulates vaccination, is important:
By the end of the week, there were 13 doses per 100 people in the UK and nine in the US, compared to just 2.7 in the European Union.
Continue pointing to each other, clicks with formula. Citizens question governments, everyone asks the European Commission, Brussels are the producers. Vaccine shortages could last until April. In a statement to Welt, Bavarian Prime Minister Marcus Söder, whom many consider to be a candidate for the German chancellor, urged the need to build a “vaccine farm” in which the state determines the course of the vaccine produced. He also called on the authorities to consider licensing Chinese and Russian vaccines.
On Friday, the European Medicines Agency gave the green light for the AstraZeneca vaccine. But the British-Swedish manufacturer will offer drastically less than contracted, also claiming that it had contracted with the British earlier.
Maybe this is how the butchers work, but not in the contracts
Said Stella Kyriakides, European Union Commissioner for Health. Earlier, Pfizer also announced that its shipments to the European Union would slow down for weeks, and it was revealed on Friday that American Moderna would also provide smaller quantities. On the same day, European Union Trade Commissioner Valdes Dombrovskis announced that he would control the export of vaccines produced in the European Union. Albert Burla, CEO of Pfizer, warned at the hypothetical World Economic Meeting in Davos that if a vaccine war breaks out in Europe, it will all be wrong. The plan also sparked disapproval of the World Health Organization. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson asked for an explanation, and
He expressed the hope that the British friends and allies of Britain would not undermine the existing transport contracts.
The committee also clashed with Dublin and Belfast and was forced to backtrack completely after the angry reactions, abandoning its plan to prevent vaccines from crossing Irish internal borders, citing the Northern Ireland protocol as the result of desperate negotiations. “It’s an incredibly aggressive move,” commented Arlene Foster, First Minister for Northern Ireland. “In the event of the vaccine emergency, the European Union has made everyone its enemies,” Bloomberg published in its summary. In it, the news agency cites a diplomatic document in which the committee informs the ambassadors of member states that millions of vaccine doses to the United Kingdom, China and Israel may have left the European Union. Blumberg wrote that many blame Commission President von der Leyen himself and his environment for the haste.
