Brexit, Nationalisation, Pandemic and Pride were the underlying conditions of the feud between the EU and UK and the vaccine producers. The way the issue erupted on Friday led to a sequence of events which will possibly leave scars as much as symptoms which will require management and diplomatic efforts.
Nationalisation and Empires
CNN – The UN General Assembly in September last year was a pivotal moment in the pandemic, when leaders began to show some unity as global deaths approached a million. They had learned hard lessons from the damage that hoarding protective equipment had done, they said. When a vaccine was developed, the world’s most vulnerable would be first in line, they claimed.The vaccines are now here and that solidarity has frayed. Between the United Kingdom and the European Union, it has disappeared entirely and given way to an all-out battle over who is more entitled to tens of millions of doses produced by British-Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca. Meanwhile, many countries in the global south have yet to administer a single vaccine.The ugly vaccine nationalism that the World Health Organization and other public health advocates feared is here. And it’s beginning in Europe, the region that usually boasts the world’s greatest levels of equality by many measures.
What the EU wants to know is why it isn’t receiving doses from the UK. BEIS did not answer CNN’s question on whether the UK had asked to be prioritized in its contract with AstraZeneca, saying only that it had ordered 100 million doses and had agreed timescales for delivery.AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot, however, said openly that the company was supplying the UK first.”The contract with the UK was signed first and the UK, of course, said ‘you supply us first,’ and this is fair enough,” he told Italy’s la Republicca on Wednesday. The EU contract, on the other hand, did not legally bind the company to a particular schedule, he said.
Ghost of Brexit
Reuters – On Friday Ireland’s Prime Minister expressed concern on Friday to EU chief Ursula von der Leyen over the executive’s decision to override part of the Brexit Northern Ireland Protocol in its plan to control exports of vaccines from the EU.
“We are aware of the issue and the Taoiseach (prime minister) is currently in discussions with European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen to express our concerns,” a spokesman for Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin said.
Northern Ireland remained in the United Kingdom’s customs union and the EU’s single market for goods under the protocol. That erected some trade barriers with the rest of the UK that angered pro-British Northern Irish politicians who called on London to retaliate against the EU on Friday.
The European Union’s chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, said he wants Brussels to step back from a deepening row with Britain over the shortage of vaccines in Europe, The Times reported.
Michel Barnier called for a “spirit of co-operation” if Britain and the EU are to work together, the newspaper said citing an interview.
Barnier’s intervention came after the EU on Friday sought to restrict exports of COVID-19 vaccines through the Irish border to the UK by invoking emergency clauses in the Brexit divorce deal.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson expressed his “grave concerns” to EU Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen over Brussels’ attempts to restrict the export of the vaccines to Northern Ireland, his office said.
Ireland’s Prime Minister Micheál Martin also expressed concern to von der Leyen over the executive’s decision.
Source of Production
The Guardian – “It seems to me that, so far as the initial 300m doses are concerned, AstraZeneca has a pretty good ground for arguing that it is not required to divert vaccine manufactured in the UK. “And that’s the conclusion really … Essentially, clause 5.1 says quite clearly AstraZeneca will be using its best reasonable efforts to manufacture the initial doses within the EU.” However, Richard Parkinson – a commercial contracts partner at JMW solicitors – said he interpreted the contract as requiring the firm to supply the 300m doses from manufacturing plants including those in the UK.
“If it has produced those doses, it would appear that it would have to supply them, as its efforts to date have resulted in the creation of that volume of vaccine. “There doesn’t appear to be anything in the contract stating that the UK’s orders take priority. Therefore, AstraZeneca appears to be in a position whereby it has two customers who each seemingly have a valid claim on the doses that have been manufactured.” Both pointed out that the contract would come under Belgian jurisdiction. While Turner stressed that he is not qualified there, he said his analysis of the document led him to believe that – should he be proven wrong and the EU proven right – AstraZeneca would have no grounds to argue that doses must not be taken from the UK to make up the shortfall.
He explained that the contract with the EU sets out that no other deal should take precedence. Parkinson added: “Even if the UK contract does say that it should be given priority, this doesn’t affect the EU’s position – though it may give the UK another ground to bring a claim against AstraZeneca.
Way Forward
POLITICO – The EU and U.K. are “jointly committed to redoubling our efforts to addressing outstanding issues” following a diplomatic spat over vaccine controls at the Irish border, officials from both sides said Saturday. European Commission Vice President Maroš Šefčovič and U.K. Cabinet Minister Michael Gove spoke via phone after Brussels set off a political firestorm by moving to override the Brexit deal as part of an effort to limit coronavirus vaccine exports. That decision was quickly reversed following immediate fallout in Dublin, London and Belfast. In identical tweets Saturday evening, Šefčovič and Gove wrote: “Our shared priority is making sure the Protocol works for the people of Northern Ireland, protecting gains of the peace process and avoiding disruption to everyday lives.
WHO Warning
Euronews reports that Dr Mariangela Simao, the WHO’s assistant director-general for access to medicines and health products, criticised the EU’s move to tighten exports of vaccines produced inside the bloc, stating that export barriers were “not helpful.”
The question was put to experts at WHO on Friday after European commissioners announced they would adopt a regulation to require an export authorisation for coronavirus vaccines produced in the 27 member states. She said it’s “not helpful to have any country at this stage put in export bans or barriers that will not allow for the free movement of the necessary ingredients that will make vaccines, diagnostics and other medicine available to all the world.”
Dr Bruce Aylward, a special adviser to the WHO’s director-general, said such measures must not “get in the way of trying to beat this disease on a global scale.”
