The EU plans to appropriate its “fair share” of vaccines by seizing production facilities, further export bans and overriding patents. “All options are on the table,” said German EU chief, Ursula Von der Leyen.
The announcement has inflamed opinion here in the UK. Iain Duncan Smith commented that the Commission was characterised by “a Stalinist level of direction but tinged with incompetence, chaos and contradictions.”
Greg Sheridan, foreign editor of The Australian, the country’s paper of record, went further, labelling the EU “the work of the devil.” He told Sky News Australia: “The European Union is essentially the work of the devil.” He continued: “Its operating procedure is this – it ties itself up in ludicrous regulatory knots and imposes grotesque cost disadvantages on it itself. It then tries to export those cost disadvantages through the treaty system and multilateralise them.”
Tensions are running high between the EU and Australia over vaccines. Last month, Italy blocked a shipment of 250,000 doses of the AstraZeneca jab. Italy has suspended its use following reports that it might be linked with a rare blood disorder.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison today asked the EU to release a million vaccine doses to contain a Covid outbreak in Papua New Guinea, a close neighbour to the north. “We’ve contacted them. We’ve paid for them. We want to see those vaccines come here,” he told reporters.
Australia is a key European ally in the Pacific region while sharing especially close cultural links with the UK. It is now increasingly uneasy with the increasingly aggressive mood in Brussels. The EU’s PR disaster on vaccine procurement is going global.
