Why the EU has good reasons to be furious about the UK’s vaccine hoarding

The EU has been sharing jabs like sweeties as the UK imposed exactly what Boris Johnson condemned – a blockade, writes Rob Merrick

The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen (Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

It is the most eye-popping statistic for many a week, that 21 million vaccine doses have been distributed from the EU to the UK while it has received a big fat zero in return.

Yes, that’s right, the bloc attacked for wanting an “export ban” has allowed jabs to be handed over like sweeties, while our own government – said to oppose “blockades” – has not allowed a single one to leave our shores.

What can explain this incredible disparity, which is accepted by No 10, and how much does it blow apart the narrative of the EU as the bad guy in these “vaccine wars”?

To pose the question is not to dispute some appalling blunders made by EU leaders – most obviously, undermining confidence in the AstraZeneca jab – but it does lay bare why the UK is, in fact, the hoarder.

The truth was buried in commercial contracts until Matt Hancock blurted it out when asked about the EU’s fury that it had not received the AstraZeneca doses it was certain it was promised.

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“They have a ‘best efforts’ contract and we have an exclusivity deal,” the health secretary told the Financial Times.

Now, this may have been a very smart move that voters will applaud and be grateful for, but it does cast the argument in a whole new light.

It might not also not have mattered, given that the UK-Swedish company manufactures in both the UK and in Belgium – until the Belgium plant suffered a dramatic production slowdown.

Faced with losing 150 million doses, the EU turned to a contract that it was convinced meant doses from both sides of the Channel would be shared, only to be told the UK was keeping them.

This raises questions about AstraZeneca’s behaviour, but also about the UK’s – which, for all its guff about wanting vaccines to “flow freely around the world”, imposed what you might call “a blockade”.

And it is not only hoarding them from the EU. There is mounting criticism of the refusal to share any jabs with developing countries, which are being starved of them.

Far from being evil “vaccine nationalists”, the EU’s mistake was to be too open – or, if you prefer, too naïve.

While the UK lined up homegrown AstraZeneca – apparently preventing Oxford University teaming up with US firm Merck in order to keep an iron grip – Brussels let its vaccine be shared widely.

BioNTech is a German firm, but was allowed to partner with the US giant Pfizer, with no “EU first” policy – hence the 21 million jabs going to the UK.

Unsurprisingly, when this was revealed to unjabbed Europeans, there was uproar and the EU started making plans to curtail exports. A bad move, perhaps – but is our government really incapable of compromise here?

The UK will never stoop to an export ban; it just won’t allow any vaccines to leave the country, while receiving 21 million from the EU. And we are surprised that Brussels is livid about that?