Interestingly your choice of words exposes two things. If the EU were actually a country that conversation wouldn't exist, people wouldn't question why London purchased vaccines with Lancashire, and the other thing is that sharing a territory means that EU members need to understand that they share responsibilities, the thing that irks me the most about the EU is that some are happy to share the benefits but cry when they have to share the responsibilities and the typical example has been the management of external borders.
EU unhappy with vaccination exports to non EU countries
- Thread starter Green_Red
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That's just a matter of accepting geography and politics. The issue is with the EU claiming to be Europe, which is nonsense of course, the British mixing up geography and politics as whether to be part of Europe or not, and with the Americans mixing up geography with skin colour. Of course if you're French you're European because France is in Europe.
I don't agree. The main issue was that the EU was embarassingly invisible during the first months of the covid crisis and had to save face by taking over the deal a few countries including Germany had made with AZ and then to proceed by abusing covid to grab power and money from the member states and hand it over to the unelected. Nontheless, AZ didn't deliver on their end of the deal and I believe in these circumstance the EC is right not to let the permission to export facilitate AZ's breach of contract.
Apologies for not being clearer. As far as I am concerned the EU is a very wealthy bloc so nah on that front poorer countries are those that are economically poor. Could not give a monkeys whether they are in the Commonwealth. Not trying to point score in any direction just would like my Country to do it’s bit for those less fortunate. Sadly self interest will win out as it always does......even in Ireland
Is that not the long term intention.
No. Future intentions will be determined by future leaders and populations, while federalists exist they are a minority.
If it was a country, its executive wouldn’t have to go through draw-out decision making processes based on consensus and so could effectively govern in situations where quick action is needed.
Yes. That is right.
In a number of cases, the structure of the EU works well. It is after all the world's biggest trading block.
But in certain cases such as an emergency, there is benefit in being much more flexible and agile. Bearing in mind of course that the UK is a union of four countries. At the moment anyway.
That's true. But something needs to be done about it because efficient and collective quick actions are necessary and I suspect that it's going to be truer in the future.
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Definitely a EU cock up and the media in Germany kind of has the same view, especially given that more and more law experts say the EU probably won`t have a leg to stand on.
But it doesn`t make bigger waves because the vaccine buying strategy of the EU has been frequently criticized for weeks already (mainly on the justified side that penny-pinching on that matter was ridiculous given that even an expensive buying strategy would`ve been dwarfed amount that was spent on economic assistance). So the AZ situation is just another point of criticism but not of huge magnitude. And to be frank, no one really cares about NI. The news right now are more about potential border closings and how to best react on the two mutation variants.
As for Von der Leyen, she already had a bad standing in the German public before this whole development, her political career trajectory was on a downward slope for the last half decade due to various reasons. So it hasn`t been a big topic but no one will shed a tear if she has to resign. She and Macron can feck off, embarassing posturing, trying to big up European sentiments while they`re only interested in own PR and their career.
There`s one thing I am slightly positively surprised: The whole EU vaccination issue does not seem to have strengthened nationalistic sentiments in the public, I would`ve thought that the attitude of "Me and my country first, I don`t care about others" would`ve been widespread but people are surprisingly relaxed about having to wait and are understanding of a strategy of solidarity. There`s even a high number of people that would have supported a world wide vaccination strategy based on risk groups even if it would take way longer.
It is a tough one for the EU. The broad principles of consensus on decision-making and spreading (geographically) the economic opportunity across the community make it hard to suddenly adapt to faster, more pragmatic processes in an emergency. When it comes to the vaccine specifics they didn't overbuy or overspend in the way the US or UK did. They were still looking at value for money on the products, encouraging EU companies, and following regional strategy for new/updated plant.
All good, laudable institutional aims - unless you look at the context of a global pandemic, a health emergency and some crippling impacts on whole sectors of the economy. It's hard to see what an emergency response can look like without implicitly accepting that sometimes the biggest payers will want to, or need to, run the show.
You are right. The EU is built for lengthy and stable topics but not for fast changing and turbulent topics, the border/migrants issue was an example of it. This might be a naive suggestion but couldn't the EMA become the emergency task force? The weird thing about the last months has been how everyone waits for the EMA's opinion but after that we have a bunch of politicians taking decisions based on their interpretations of what knowledgeable people told them. In case of health emergency I don't really care about Macron's opinion, though I don't care about it outside of crisis too.
Just another example of the EU being their usual efficient self. This is what you get from a big centralised government. It is mental that there was a joint EU approach for buying the vaccines in the first place when it should have been left to the member states.
Not especially bothered in Italy and Switzerland (i know Switzerland isn't EU).
It was in the news for about 5 minutes but that's quite common; the UK is always reporting the EU is about to collapse in on itself. I'd be surprised if most Italians even knew where Northern Ireland is. Italy is reasonably happy with the vaccine rollout so far, well over half a million have had both doses and Pfizer is delivering on time again. The AZ vaccine has been recommended for use on under 55s so the procurement problems don't matter too much, it won't be used in any of the priority groups.
Surely it could be used in priority group based on their job?
In Ireland we’ve already vaccinated all our HCWs with Pfizer (twice) but I can see AZ playing a role when it comes to other frontline workers in priority groups. What we really need now though are more supplies of a vaccine to use in the elderly. We’re a long way off vaccinating all of them. Only care home residents done so far.
The priority list is:
- Frontline health workers (1.4 million)
- Nursing home staff and residents (570,000)
- Over-80s (4.4 million)
- 60-79 year olds
- People of any age with at least one chronic health condition that puts them at higher risk of falling seriously ill with Covid-19
- Sociodemographic groups at significantly higher risk of severe illness or death
- High-risk teachers and school staff
- All other teachers and school staff
- Key workers and others who work in high-risk settings
- Prison wardens and prisoners
- People with less serious chronic health conditions
- Everyone else
HCWs are already done or underway and mRNA vaccines are preferred for the elderly and those with weaker immune systems, so realistically it will be group 6 or 7 who will be brought forward and given the AZ vaccine. They were originally expected to be done in Q2 at best.
@11101, the over-80s vaccinations were due to start this coming week (a few regions have already started), but the last I read said that the timetable was expected to slip by 4 weeks for them and 6-8 weeks for everyone else. There's a lot of over-80s of course. The next group will also take a long time to get through, as 60 to 79 years old is a very big age band.
I assume they'll start from the 79-year-olds and work backwards.
I assume they'll start from the 79-year-olds and work backwards.
That’s similar to us. Looks like AZ vaccine could be used in group 5 onwards. Maybe the younger end of group 4. We rattled through 1 and 2 quick enough but 3 and 4 are taking longer than we’d like. Especially when compared to the UK (which all the critics are doing, obviously)
Although I do think - in an ideal world - we should not be using AZ vaccine in that group. If Pfizer’s manufacturing upscaling they’ve been working on this month comes good then a lot of our problems go away but we’ve still lost several weeks from the original planned schedule.
There are obvious reasons why it shouldn’t have been left to the member states. A bidding war with the manufacturers would have completely fecked over the poorer countries. And it’s in nobody’s interest for richer countries to race ahead with vaccination while the virus continues to run amok in their neighbours.
And it's because governments are decentralized that the EU isn't efficient in that type of scenario. It's always strange for me when people say the opposite.
Is that actually happening? Surely what’s happening is that the EMA licenses the vaccine then clinical guidelines - drafted by expert clinicians - are issued in various countries saying in whom it should be used and how. Which is the same approach as with any new medicine (minus the local cost effectiveness approval, which often takes far longer than regulatory approval)
I don’t know what you’re saying there. You think there would have been a better outcome for the EU as a whole if supplies had been preferentially allocated to the highest bidder(s)?
Even the Guardian/Observer going in hard on the commission today: https://www.theguardian.com/comment...ver-view-on-the-vaccine-dispute-with-brussels
I'm saying that it's because the EU has decentralized governments that it's not good at dealing with crisis, since those decentralized governments have to take into account other governments and other bordering countries. A centralize government would immediately deal the issue for everyone without having to negotiate with itself.
In that respect the EU are in the right. Still, the way they’ve handled the situation and the NI border check thing has been awful. Even the member states were shocked.
Well national politicians have done their own things when it comes to roll outs, who gets what and how many doses? While I suppose that the EMA only gave them a singular opinion for all member states?
Back on topic, there was a big article in the newspaper yesterday heaping praise on Boris and the UK for the way they're cracking on with the vaccine program.
The EMA gives an opinion that vaccines x, y and z are safe and effective when used in accordance with the license. It’s then up to the experts in the individual countries to decide which vaccine should be used in which at risk group and how. As well as defining the various at risk groups and their relative priority.
These are clinical and ethical decisions which should be out of the hands of politicians and made by expert panels of clinicians/ethicists. Here’s the group who are making these decisions in Ireland.
Politicians will inevitably front up to the press and try to explain how these guidelines are going to work but it wouldn’t be uncommon for then to misinterpret or misunderstand them. It’s not their area of expertise. It is also possible that the politicians might try to influence these decisions. But that’s unlikely to end well.
And that's my point, I don't want national politicians to be involved when we have the EMA and experts at the EU level. My issue is with politicians not the EMA.
I think Boris and the UK have done a lot wrong in the handling of the pandemic, but the vaccination programme has been a success so far. The UK is by far the country in Europe that has vaccinated the largest part of their population.
The experts I’m referring to are at national, not EU, level. How much they are influenced by national politicians will vary. Hopefully not much at all. Certainly not been the case in Ireland.
With two large EU countries not recommending AZ vaccine for over 55s and 65s, Macron wrongly saying to the nation it's only 8% effective and other countries probably going down the same route as Germany and Italy I can see why the EU was backing down as the uptake won't be as great. Of course they'll still want what they paid for to use but they put money into EU factories to supply the vaccine after the UK plants were taken up much earlier in other deals it seems and couldn't possibly supply the EU, these EU factories with low yields will be producing a lot more in two months.
EU will have an abundance of vaccines soon and Pfizer will be delivering much more in the coming weeks. It says a lot for Italy to not be fussed about wanting to use it. I can see people in general in Europe happy to wait for the pfizer, moderna, J&J, novavax etc. EU might have to divert a lot of AZ supplies for some good PR.
EU will have an abundance of vaccines soon and Pfizer will be delivering much more in the coming weeks. It says a lot for Italy to not be fussed about wanting to use it. I can see people in general in Europe happy to wait for the pfizer, moderna, J&J, novavax etc. EU might have to divert a lot of AZ supplies for some good PR.
So AZ just found 9 million extra doses for the EU behind the back of their sofa.
Hmmmm...
Hmmmm...
Let's not forget that France were also giving the EU hope with the Pasteur Institute vaccine, which failed last week. This added to EU desperation.
The suspicious part is the one weak earlier than scheduled. I may go down for that one but you can't trust a french CEO.
Well 9,000,000 is only one zero more than 900,000!
The vaccines were just resting in their account
I don't think the EU has just gone through the week it has to then end up giving them all away, people seem to have it in for the AZ vaccine, but it is there now, approved, and trails show it has the ability to stop everyone from dying who has it, so it ticks all the boxes it needs to just now as far as I can see.
Just seen that. I wonder if they’d have found those doses without the EU doing all the sabre-rattling they got so much stick for? I suspect not.