A nurse administers a dose of the Covid-19 vaccine at the Woluwe-Saint-Pierre vaccination center in Brussels, Belgium.
Jean-Christophe Guillaume | Getty Images News | Getty Images
LONDON – The European Commission presented new plans on Wednesday to restrict the export of Covid-19 vaccines from the 27-member bloc.
Authorities are concerned that pharmaceutical companies will not meet delivery targets in the coming months. And the commission, the EU’s executive arm, wants to ensure that member states receive all the injuries that were promised for the second quarter.
These vaccines will be essential to achieve its goal of vaccinating 70% of the EU’s adult population by the end of the summer.
“While our Member States face the third wave of the pandemic and not all companies are fulfilling their contract, the EU is the only major producer in the OECD that continues to export vaccines on a large scale to dozens of countries. But open roads must work in both directions, “European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement.
The proposals build on existing mechanisms and will introduce two changes in which EU Member States will consider “reciprocity” and “proportionality” with their exports.
They will now consider whether the country of destination restricts its own exports of vaccines, or raw materials, and whether the country of destination is ahead or behind the EU with the launch of the vaccine.
AstraZeneca dispute
This tougher position in Brussels comes after having suffered setbacks in the number of vaccines delivered by AstraZeneca. Earlier this year, the Anglo-Swedish company said it could only deliver 30 million doses of its vaccine, developed alongside the University of Oxford, in the first quarter, instead of about 90 million doses.
And, more recently, the pharmaceutical giant has also reduced delivery expectations for the second quarter to less than half of what the bloc initially expected.
The AstraZeneca shot is important for a wider deployment in the European Union, because some countries favor it because it is cheaper and requires less stringent maintenance conditions, compared to others.
An EU official, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue, said at a news conference on Wednesday that the new proposal “is not an export ban”. “There is still a deficit in the production of vaccines and there is also … an unfair balance with regard to distribution,” said the official, adding that the idea is to overcome this gap and increase the supply of balanced vaccines.
Von der Leyen already suggested last week that the EU should consider stricter vaccine controls. She said at the time that although the EU has exported 41 million doses of Covid-19 shots since January to 33 countries worldwide, some nations were not showing the same level of reciprocity.
Commission data show that, of the exports so far, the United Kingdom has received the most, more than 10 million doses; followed by Canada, which received 6.6 million; and then Japan with 5.4 million.
‘Not against the UK’
The renewed stance in Brussels could become a problem for the United Kingdom, which has been the largest recipient of coronavirus vaccines produced in the EU so far, and where the vaccination rate is well above the EU.
“It is not against the United Kingdom, it is to ensure that AstraZeneca fulfills its commitments to the European Union,” Arancha Gonzalez, Spain’s foreign minister, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Wednesday.
“The export restrictions we are preparing for were never intended to be against countries. Their objective was to ensure that pharmaceutical companies fulfilled their commitments, with the contracts they signed with the European Commission ”, he added.
A UK government spokesman said on Wednesday: “We are all battling the same pandemic – vaccines are an international collaboration of great scientists around the world. And we will continue to work with our European partners to deliver the implementation. of the vaccine. “
The commission announced in late January that member states would be able to prevent vaccines from leaving the block when pharmaceutical companies fail to deliver and when vaccines are going to countries not considered vulnerable by the EU.
The new plans on Wednesday are based on this legislation. But the old rules expire at the end of March.
The latest proposal will be discussed by the 27 heads of state on Thursday during an EU summit.
Earlier this week, Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin warned of a tougher vaccine export policy, saying it could hamper the supply of raw materials for vaccine production in the EU. “I am totally against it. I think it would be a step backwards,” Martin told RTE radio.