EU vows to hold back vaccines from Australia, UK

Australia may face further delays of imported vaccines in coming months after Europe flags dramatic measures to keep vaccines for its own citizens.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Picture: AFP

Australia could face further delays of imported vaccines in the coming months after Europe engaged in “undemocratic brinkmanship” and intensified the “vaccine wars” on Wednesday.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen escalated her threats that Europe would safeguard vaccines made in Europe solely for Europeans, insisting “this is about making sure that Europe gets its fair share” during what she called “the crisis of the century”.

She said the recent blockage of the vaccine to Australia would not be a one-off.

Mrs von der Leyen has even refused to rule out invoking an even more dramatic measure, the emergency Article 122, which would allow the European Union to seize all vaccine factory production, waive intellectual property rights and patents as well as imposing export bans.

“All options are on the table,’’ Mrs von der Leyen said.

“We are in the crisis of the century and I am not ruling out anything for now. We have to make sure that Europeans are vaccinated as soon as possible.”

British politicians immediately rebuked Mrs von der Leyen. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab alluded that the EU was engaging in undemocratic brinkmanship. Other Tory MPs criticised the EU as acting like a communist entity.

An Italian shipment of 250,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine due for export to Australia was banned last month, the only batch of more than 300 batches comprising 41m doses that has been exported from Europe in the past six weeks.

It is unclear how the EU will react to Australia’s recent request for one million of its contracted vaccine doses to be redirected to Papua New Guinea.

But it appears Australia is to be once again caught in the crossfire which appears to be firmly directed at Britain, a country which continues to embarrass continental efforts. Australia was expecting to receive millions of doses of both AstraZeneca and Pfizer BioNTech vaccines from European factories before the end of the year.

Britain has steamed through its vaccination program with more than 25 million people receiving at least one inoculation so far. While a new advice from the National Health Service is that there could be a four week “severe constraint” in vaccines from March 29, the Health secretary Matt Hancock said supply of vaccine was always going to be “lumpy” and reiterated that all British adults will be vaccinated by the end of July. But in Europe, vaccination efforts have been so shambolic it has begun to have political implications for leaders in Germany and France, and the rate of rollout across the continent is less than a quarter than that of Britain.

While Ms von der Leyen is insisting she will hoover up all the vaccines for her 27 member states, 19 European countries have stopped issuing the AstraZeneca vaccine over fears it can cause blood clots. This comes after earlier episodes of delayed approval for the AstraZeneca vaccine and European leaders questioning its effectiveness.

Now, nearly eight million doses of AstraZeneca sit in the fridges of European member countries as a result of a loss of confidence in the vaccine, and also because some countries, such as France, have high vaccine hesitancy, despite both the World Health Organisation and the European encouraging the continued use of the AstraZeneca doses.

Mrs von der Leyen said “human lives, civil liberties and our economy are dependent on the speed of vaccination on moving forward”. She added: “We will have to reflect on how to make exports to vaccine-producing countries dependent on their level of openness. And on whether exports to countries who have higher vaccination rates than us are still proportionate.”

She demanded that Britain start exporting vaccines it has manufactured across to Europe.

“We want to see reciprocity and proportionality in exports and we are ready to use whatever tool we need to deliver on that,” Mrs von der Leyen said.

But Mr Raab said the EU had provided direct assurances that contracts signed by the British government with vaccine producers would be honoured.

“Frankly, I’m surprised we’re having this conversation. It is normally what the UK and EU team up with to reject when other countries with less democratic regimes than our own engage in that kind of brinkmanship.

“I think it takes some explaining because the world’s watching. All of us, including with our European friends, been saying throughout the pandemic, that you’d be wrong to curtail or interfere with lawfully-contracted supply.”