Can the EU Salvage its COVID-19 Vaccination Rollout? And if so, how?
Morgan Fox, Online Staff Writer
March 5, 2021
The global race to get vaccinated has begun. With America’s ‘Operation Warpspeed’ well underway and 15 million Britons vaccinated, procurement, supply chain, and distribution problems are becoming all the more visible in the fight against Covid-19. Lagging behind the US and the UK is the European Union, home to some 450 million people. At first glance, the EU, with the money, influence, and power of 27 countries, should be leading the pack with its vaccine distribution. As of February 13th though, only 18.5 million doses have been distributed. What happened?
In a different world, this is Europe’s finest hour. It’s vaccine procurement scheme is unique by giving the EU the power to negotiate the purchase on behalf of member-states. This especially benefits small countries, by giving them more negotiating power as a whole and avoiding competition between European nations. While this isn’t a mandatory scheme, all 27 member-states chose to opt-in. The program also gives countries the option to negotiate deals with vaccines that the EU chooses not to secure, as Hungary has done with Russia’s Sputnik-V vaccine. When it was announced, the scheme was widely hailed as a perfect example of the EU’s purpose, and a strong indicator of greater European cohesion in the future. Unfortunately, it seems that the program has only widened the existing divisions.
The biggest problem with the EU’s vaccine procurement and distribution is culture. The EU is a risk-averse and bureaucratic institution on a good day, and its citizens have some of the highest vaccine skepticism rates in the West. A June 2020 poll found that just 56% of Poles and 59% of the French would take a ‘safe and effective’ coronavirus vaccine. This skepticism led to a series of issues in the vaccine negotiations. Unlike other countries, including the UK, Israel, and the US, who were willing to accept more worse terms and conditions to ensure faster distribution, the EU reportedly ‘quibbled’ over price and liability terms. In the end, the EU was able to ensure a lower price for the Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Moderna vaccines, but economists argue that this will be macroeconomically insignificant. The more stringent accountability terms the EU secured if something goes wrong with a vaccine could be important at some point, but some wonder if it’s worth the lives lost caused by the delays in the negotiations.
Due to these red lines in the negotiations, the European Union signed its vaccine deals after the US and the UK - not significantly later, but enough to make a difference. This can be seen in the debacle surrounding the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine: while the UK secured 100 million doses in May 2020, the EU only secured its 300 million in August. In the past few months, while the UK has been instituting a successful mass vaccination program, the EU has had its AstraZeneca doses cut by 60% for 2021’s first quarter due to supply problems. The bloc argued that it shouldn’t receive less doses simply because it signed a contract later than the UK, but AstraZeneca responded that this left the company less time to resolve supply chain issues. The EU-AstraZeneca agreement also allows for the option of supplying Europe with vaccines from British sites, not just Belgian ones, but only when the UK has received ‘sufficient supplies’. This led to diplomatic outrage, and the EU threatened to introduce export controls on vaccines made in the bloc, which would violate the Brexit agreement by imposing a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. Following public fury, the EU did not impose the export controls, but it hasn’t managed to solve its vaccine supply issues either. Aside from AstraZeneca, the bloc has faced similar issues with its Pfizer and Moderna doses, with supply problems leading to the temporary pausing of vaccinations in several EU countries, including France and Spain. The Moderna CEO summed it up neatly by stating that a delayed order will not limit the total amount, but that it will slow down delivery.
The European Union was hoping to vaccinate 70% of its adult population by the end of summer, but if they continue at the current pace, they will only have 15% vaccinated by then. To hit their target, rollout would need to be five times faster.
There are several consequences to this. First and foremost, lives will be lost due to the delays, and lockdowns will continue as new variants spring up and third and fourth waves arrive. It also gives Boris Johnson the opportunity to argue that Brexit gave the UK the opportunity to knock its vaccine rollout out of the park, without being hindered by EU bureaucracy. While this isn’t necessarily true, since the EU’s vaccine scheme is optional and the UK could have opted out even if it was still part of the bloc, the argument will give weight to nationalists across Europe. Lastly, Germany and France have elections in 2021 and 2022, respectively. In mid-2020, they abandoned their individual vaccine negotiations to join up with the EU’s program, but if the delays continue, Macron and Merkel’s parties could struggle to succeed with their consistently pro-EU platforms. Looking to the future, the strength of the bloc’s vaccine rollout could have long-lasting political consequences.