Reality is dawning on the EU: export bans are counterproductive, and in the case of Covid vaccines, fatally so

Editorial: The British will probably end up helping the Europeans push their appallingly low vaccination rates up, if only out of enlightened self-interest

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Trying to approach the great EU vaccine problem as dispassionately as possible, a few things seem clear. Such facts of pandemic life seem also to have informed discussions at the EU summit, which turns out not to have been the council of war that had been feared.

First, there was, and is, no logical reason why the Anglo-Swedish AstraZeneca company would have a vested interest in providing vaccines to the UK rather than the EU, all other factors being equal. There has been no suggestion of conspiracy or wrongdoing. The EU has asked for transparency and for AstraZeneca to live up to its promises. Why it has not done so has never been revealed, or even leaked by the various parties involved.

So why did the British, for a change, get lucky? The obvious solution to this conundrum is that the British either got their order in first, or that they funded the AZ research more fully or earlier, or that their contract was more strictly drafted than the EU version, or some permutation of these various factors. If the EU has a problem with its vaccines then the problem lies with AstraZeneca, not the UK, and it needs to be settled legally.