Syringes prepared at the Brussels Expo Covid-19 Vaccination Center in Brussels, Belgium, on Friday, March 5, 2021.
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LONDON – The launch of the coronavirus vaccine in Europe once again gained prominence after the Italian government blocked the sending of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines to Australia.
The EU has struggled to distribute Covid-19 vaccines across the 27-member region and is lagging behind in other advanced economies in the number of vaccines per citizen. There are complaints that regulators take too long to approve vaccines, there have been problems with manufacturing and delivery and national bureaucracy, making the process more difficult.
But new questions were raised on Thursday, when Italy became the first EU country to use the bloc’s new regulations that allow exports to be stopped if necessary. The move prevented some 250,000 doses of the vaccine from its factory in Anagni, Italy, from being sent to Australia.
Launching the vaccine in Europe “will be an uphill battle,” Daniel Gros, director of the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels, Belgium, told CNBC on Friday.
How the EU got here
The EU announced in late January new rules that allow European member states, where coronavirus vaccines are produced, to prohibit their exports if the pharmaceutical company involved is not complying with pre-existing contracts with the bloc.
The EU and AstraZeneca are at loggerheads, as the pharmaceutical company has failed to deliver the number of injections the bloc expected for the first quarter. There are also doubts about how many doses the company will be able to deliver in the second quarter.
The EU is burned by something that the US does in a more radical way.
Daniel Gros
director of CEPS
AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot said at the end of last month that the vaccine deficit was due to production problems and that his company was working around the clock to increase production.
French Health Minister Olivier Veran said on Friday morning that France could replicate Italy’s action. German Health Minister Jens Spahn said that so far there is no reason to prevent shipments of vaccines produced in Germany to other countries, according to Reuters.
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said last month that about 95% of the vaccines manufactured in the EU exported since the end of January were manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, as both companies were respecting their agreement with the HUH.
At the time, she also said that the United States and the United Kingdom had systems to block exports of these vaccines.
Europe is ‘baked’ by something that others also do
“The EU is burned by something that the US does in a more radical way,” said CEPS’s Gros.
“The amount involved was minuscule. But as usual people jump on the symbols. The United States does not have this problem of having to suspend vaccines at the border because nobody would think of exporting anything from the United States, ”he added.
In executive order in early December, then President Donald Trump ordered the United States to export vaccines produced in the country only after it was established that there were enough doses to inoculate the American population.
“After determining that there is a sufficient supply of doses of COVID-19 vaccine for all Americans who choose to be vaccinated … (the US) should facilitate international access to the United States government’s COVID-19 vaccines for allies, partners and others, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, “says the request.
Shipping to Australia has been blocked because the country is not on the EU’s list of vulnerable nations. EU regulations exempt distribution to the poorest nations from being blocked by member states.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said at a news conference on Friday that the country’s vaccine program “will remain unshakable”, adding that the shipment in question was not the one they were counting on for the launch.
Australia asked the European Commission to review Italy’s decision to block the shipment, but Morrison admitted that he understood why there would be a high level of anxiety in Italy and across Europe.
“We must not forget that the EU is supplying vaccines to the south of the world, while avoiding this sending to Australia,” Alberto Alemanno, professor of European law at HEC Paris, told CNBC on Friday.
He added that the “EU export control regulation incorporates the EU’s legitimate attempt to gain some sovereign autonomy.”