As the AstraZeneca dispute deepens, EU-UK rift widens
It is clear that the EU now regards Britain as a more dangerous enemy than Russia, and in a sense it is right.
From the moment Britain decided to leave the EU, it should have been obvious to everyone that there was an existential struggle ahead for both sides of the separation: for if the decision were not a disaster for Britain, it would be a disaster for the EU, calling into question the need for such an entity.
This was the case irrespective of whether you were for or against Brexit. All subsequent talk of friendship was but persiflage: the relations between the two sides were bound to be those of enmity.
This fundamental fact helps to explain the convoluted history of the relations of the EU with AstraZeneca and its now notorious vaccine. So far — but, as Sherlock Holmes might have put it, the game is still afoot — Britain has managed its vaccination program extremely well by comparison with all the major countries of the EU, which have been hamstrung by the union’s small but powerful, lumbering, inefficient and overcautious bureaucracy.
Britain’s relative success is a seeming vindication of a national rather than a transnational approach to a crisis. The ever-closer union that is the mantra of the EU — often called “the project” — seems to entail ever greater confusion combined with ever greater sclerosis.
The AstraZeneca vaccine, which is cheap and easy to store, was an important initial part of both Britain’s and Europe’s vaccination plans, immunisation against the virus being now the only conceivable escape from the infernal cycle of lockdown and recrudescence that is damaging to economies and psyches alike.
When it first became clear that Britain was racing ahead with its program, the EU cried foul: for Britain was receiving more doses of the vaccine than Europe, although much was manufactured in Europe.
Britain argued that this was as it should be because the research and development of the vaccine was British, it was Britain alone that had invested money in its manufacture, and it was Britain that had made a firm commitment to purchase it before the EU, even before it was known whether the vaccine worked. It took a risk, which the EU never did.
By contrast, the EU argued that the company was not meeting its contractual obligations to supply the number of doses that it said it would make its best efforts to deliver.
The precise legalities of the disagreement were not clear, but in the meantime Britain vaccinated a far greater proportion of its population than did the EU, especially the most vulnerable.
It was at this stage that French President Emmanuel Macron issued his statement that the vaccine didn’t really work anyway, that it was “almost ineffective” in people over 65 — that is to say, the people who most needed immunisation. At nearly the same time, the highly respected German business paper Handelsblad published an article in which an unnamed official said that the vaccine had only 8 per cent efficacy in the elderly.
The result was that the vaccine was not recommended for the over-65s. It was thus really a blessing in disguise that the EU had very little of the vaccine to give to the population and was a vindication of the EU’s slow and cautious approach.
Such supplies as it had now couldn’t be given away, for confidence in it had been destroyed in populations that were, for whatever reason, already sceptical about, or mistrustful of, immunisation.
Macron is far too intelligent a man not to have known that his statement was so misleading as to be almost a barefaced lie. The figure quoted in Handelsblad could never be substantiated.
Worse still, data began to accumulate that the vaccine was highly effective in the elderly, a single dose virtually eliminating serious disease among them, at least for a time.
But still the European immunisation program lagged: if political criticism of the EU were to be headed off, blame had once more to be shifted.
AstraZeneca was again blamed for its failure to deliver supplies. Therefore, the EU began to threaten to block exports of the vaccine manufactured in Europe and did stop a shipment to Australia.
The discovery of 28 million doses in a factory in Italy that were said to be destined for Britain caused outrage, though it was soon revealed that this story was false, that most of the doses were destined for Belgium and the rest for poor countries. However, as a certain well-known European statesman once said, if you sling enough mud, some of it sticks. But the EU added another string to its bow, namely a connection between a rare blood-clotting disease and the vaccine. The precise causative relationship has not been established, and the side effect is very rare, many times rarer than, say, death from a general anaesthetic alone.
The European Medicines Agency, which to its great credit has played with a straight bat throughout (being composed of doctors and scientists rather than petty politicians), has repeatedly endorsed the vaccine as safe and effective. On Thursday it said that while there was an association of blood clots to the brain, it was “very rare”. It did not change its recommendation to continue distributing the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Widespread publicity, however, has destroyed what little confidence there was in the vaccine: having once not been recommended by national governments for the over-65s, also now not recommended for the under-50s. Sixty-eight per cent of the German population now thinks the vaccine is actively unsafe. Not surprisingly, it is difficult to get people to accept it, even as the epidemic rages. People would rather have COVID-19 than the vaccine.
It is in these circumstances that the EU is threatening to impose a ban on exports to Britain. Whether this ban would affect the program in Britain very seriously or for very long remains to be seen. What it certain is that the major countries of the EU now have difficulty in distributing such AstraZeneca vaccine — millions of doses, after all — as they already have.
The politicians in Europe by now must know two things: that the vaccine is largely safe and effective, and that, thanks to them, the population does not trust it (unlike in Britain, where it does) and probably will refuse to take it.
They are also aware that the vaccination program in Britain has been carried out much more successfully than in the EU, and this reflects badly on them and their project.
Therefore, it is much more important for them that the British should not be vaccinated than that their own populations should be, at least until such time as they can catch up. They do not want the AstraZeneca vaccine for themselves but want to prevent Britain from having it and thereby widening the gap further.
In the meantime, they are considering importing and using the Russian vaccine, Sputnik, on a large scale, even though it has been far less tested than the AstraZeneca vaccine and even though the vast majority of the Russian population has not been immunised with it — which exposes the EU’s argument that the AstraZeneca vaccine should not be exported to Britain because so many of the British population have already had it and therefore equity demands that it should be more available in Europe.
It is clear, then, that the EU regards Britain as a more dangerous an enemy than Russia, and in a sense it is right.
Russia’s main threat is military, unlikely ever to be used as long as the US has an interest in Europe. Britain poses a danger by example, and for the moment, at least, the example is mightier than the missile.
Theodore Dalrymple is the author of more than 30 books, including Grief and Other Stories (New English Review Press).
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