Is the AstraZeneca vaccine row dividing the EU?

The bloc’s vaccine procurement exercise was supposed to show how Brussels’ financial muscle and rediscovered sense of solidarity would benefit the people of Europe. Sean O’Grady explains what the pandemic is doing to the EU

Europe is playing catch up on Covid inoculations (AFP via Getty)

Imagine if AstraZeneca happened to be an American or Chinese company, and manufactured all of its Covid vaccines far away from the EU and Britain. The chances are that the stories about production problems, breaches of contract and export bans would not have acquired the heated, chauvinistic Brexity quality that they have in recent days. It would be much more of a business story than yet another episode of the Brexit saga. It would matter, but the focus would be on the prosaic aspects of contractual obligations, complex supply chains and the impact on public health.  

Instead, of course, with a somewhat similar set of rows about the Pfizer vaccine, it has been itself infected by the virus of populist nationalism. In some ways, this probably suits the European Union, to be seen to be standing up for Europe’s citizens and demanding its fair share, legally and morally. Who cares, on this reading, if the British got their big order in first? Any company is obliged to honour its obligations no matter when any order was placed. So the EU wants transparency, from AstraZeneca. The company is sticking to its “first come first served” policy.  

The EU’s subsequent proposal to require approval for vaccine exports to third countries (mainly Britain), looks illogical, and nationalistic, even if it is only part of a continuing struggle with a private sector pharma giant. Conveniently, though, it distracts from any criticism among the member states about the EU’s own mistakes, if any. This may not last.  

The EU’s common vaccine procurement exercise was supposed to show how the EU’s financial muscle and rediscovered sense of solidarity could work for the people of Europe. The case for the proposed “European Health Union” would be strengthened. It would also make up for the chaotic events during the first phases of the Covid crisis, when individual nations imposed export bans on protective equipment and ventilators, and there was precious little help for those parts of the union hit hardest in the first wave – Italy and Spain. The 27 states signed up to the European Commission’s plan and looked forward to an efficient distribution of inoculations.  

It has not worked out quite like that, and it seems AstraZeneca and Britain are in some malign sense responsible for the mess – only about 2 per cent of Europe’s citizens protected, against more than 10 per cent of Britons. It is, rather, at least possible that the commission was slow to act (as it was earlier in this crisis). This might be derived from a failure of leadership, or the inevitable result of trying to herd 27 governments towards a consensus. Perhaps the contract was not drawn up tightly enough. There is also some irony that the European Medicines Agency (once headquartered in London and now in Amsterdam) is only now approving the AstraZeneca jab for public use. Even so, Germany now says it will not use it on the over-65s, for lack of evidence in initial trials. It is a matter of opinion as to whether the European authorities have been too cautious about the accelerated programmes for vaccine approval, and may be proved right.  

For the time being the EU commissioner for health, Stella Kyriakides, and the president, Urusula von der Leyen, have gone on the offensive against big pharma – “the EU means business”. Few in Europe echo the line of British Leavers that the EU created the vaccine crisis and that that vindicates Brexit, which would be absurd even it was true, given that supply problems were always inevitable.  

However, the EU does have a ready supply of critics across the continent ready to put some poison into the political debate. Some national ministers of health under pressure from worried electorates may soon enough start deflecting blame into “Brussels”. Unkind critics will claim that President von der Leyen was a failure when she was the German minister of defence, and she’s no better in the new role. Covid, at any rate, hasn’t made for an ever closer union.