Unfair to accuse the EU of vaccine nationalism, says Dombrovskis

LONDON – The European Union is “facing a serious situation” by launching Covid-19 vaccines, but it is “highly unfair” to accuse the vaccine bloc of nationalism, the region’s chief commercial officer told CNBC on Tuesday.

Since the start of its vaccination program, the EU has faced a great deal of of criticism, not least because it is too slow to approve vaccines and block Covid-19 vaccine exports.

At the same time, delivery problems with the AstraZeneca vaccine hit vaccine deployment during the first quarter and there are concerns in Brussels about whether contractual commitments will be fully respected in the next three months.

“Clearly, we are facing a serious situation in the launch of the vaccine. We need to speed up the vaccination, we need to speed up the production and supply of the vaccine,” Valdis Dombrovskis, EU commercial head, told CNBC’s Squawk Box Europe.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, has been working with different pharmaceutical companies to increase vaccine production in member states. The institution wants to see 70% of Europe’s adult population vaccinated by the end of the summer.

However, meeting this target will depend on whether companies supply the quantity of vaccines the bloc expects, as well as on the ability of member states to distribute vaccines among their populations.

AstraZeneca already cut its delivery numbers twice in the first quarter and said it will distribute less than half of the original target in the second quarter as well.

Given the importance of the AstraZeneca injection for the EU’s vaccination program, European authorities are considering whether to impose tougher export restrictions. They could, for example, prevent vaccines produced in the EU from being sent elsewhere, in particular to the United Kingdom, where the vaccination rate is significant higher than among the 27 countries.

That sparked accusations that the EU practices vaccine nationalism.

“We think it is highly unfair to accuse the EU, which is one of the biggest exporters of vaccines, of vaccine nationalism,” said Dombrovskis.

The EU released last week that it exported 41 million doses of Covid-19 to 33 countries, with the United Kingdom the biggest recipient. At the same time, the EU said it is not seeing the same level of reciprocity as other parts of the world.

However, the EU also stopped sending AstraZeneca vaccines to Australia earlier this month due to delivery problems with the pharmaceutical company.

The legislation that allowed the EU to stop this shipment expires at the end of the month. As a result, EU officials are considering the possibility of extending and tightening these laws in the future.

“What is important now is for companies to really honor their contracts, because the problem we face, especially with a company that is not honoring the contract, is that the supply of vaccines is far short of what was agreed upon,” said Dombrovskis.

In the next three months, the European Union expects 55 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, 200 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, 35 million for Moderna and another 70 million for AstraZeneca.