The behaviour of the EU over the vaccine would make the most ardent Europhile cringe

The Covid vaccine row has not been the European Union’s finest hour.

At every step, Brussels has gone out of its way to behave in a manner calculated to make the most ardent Europhile cringe and gleeful Brexiteers declare: “We’re well out of that mess.”

While the UK – led by Kate Bingham’s vaccines task force – moved nimbly and swiftly to fund research, sign contracts and approve drugs, the EU response has been characterised by the bloc’s perennial flaws of over-centralisation, sluggishness and bluster.

By all accounts, AstraZeneca was ready to do a deal with a group of major EU states last year, before the European Commission stepped in and demanded to lead the negotiation, putting back by several weeks the bloc’s advance purchase agreement for more than 300 million doses of vaccine.

AstraZeneca’s chief executive Pascal Soriot has said that the EU put pen to paper three months after the UK, and it is believed also to have been beaten to the line by the US, Japan and the Gavi international vaccination programme.

And that delay matters. Mr Soriot says the extra preparation time allowed plants in the UK to confront and overcome exactly the kind of glitches which have reduced production at AstraZeneca’s Belgian suppliers, so they were ready to produce at full throttle after receiving regulatory approval.

The EU, by contrast, is reduced to making loud and tetchy complaints about the supply of a vaccine, which its own regulatory agency, the European Medicines Agency, has yet even to approve for use on the continent, while its vaccination rates lag at just 2 per cent of its population compared to the UK’s 10 per cent.

And Brussels’ response of publicly browbeating the very people who are effectively riding to its rescue and firing the first salvo in what threatens to be a vicious bout of vaccine nationalism have not redounded to its credit. Moans that Europeans are being treated as “second class citizens” and warnings that AstraZeneca and the UK “better think twice” are hardly designed to encourage sympathy.

Of course the UK, had it still been in the EU, would have been quite free to opt out of the centralised vaccine procurement scheme and strike its own deals. But that doesn’t get Brussels off the hook for its failings.

For those who wanted to keep Britain in the EU, all that is left to fall back on is the argument that was at the heart of many people’s decision to vote Remain: just because it’s not perfect doesn’t mean it’s not worth having.

The EU’s sclerotic reflexes, patchy delivery of services and tendency to throw its weight around have been on display this week. But so too – in the shape of small businesses drowning in red tape and food rotting at the borders – has been the fact that for 40 years it allowed the UK to trade, talk and cooperate with its nearest neighbours with an ease which now seems to be firmly in the past.

Yours,

Andrew Woodcock

Political editor