The EU’s vaccine war is daft, dangerous and counterproductive to fighting Covid

The world knows that vaccine wars are dangerous and deeply counterproductive. What is more perplexing is when one combatant can’t actually decide which side it is on. Some countries in Europe have ceased to administer the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. But now President von der Leyen of the European Commission wants to ban exports to Britain of a vaccine they don’t have any use for: Ursula through the looking glass, it seems. Curious, but dangerous too.

Ever since President Macron made some disobliging, and frankly ignorant, remarks about the safety of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine some weeks ago, there has been a steady drumbeat of disquiet and fears emanating from the continent. Nation after nation has variously “paused” or limited the use of the vaccine. Although it is sometimes referred to as British, it is in fact an Anglo-Swedish company that produces it, and it was developed through impressive international collaboration. It is safe, though many European nations deem it less than perfect, including some such as Norway and Switzerland, outside the EU. Some, it should be added, inside the EU have qualms, such as Greece and Portugal.

A mixed picture then, but the general impression is of the larger states of the EU not being especially keen on it. “More fool them” might be a chauvinistic British response. Yet now the president of the European Commission has reverted to making threatening noises about slapping an export ban on the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, slowing its supply to the UK. It is true that this would help protect supplies and lives in Europe. It might even be what is legally required of AstraZeneca. Yet it makes little sense for the EU to try to hoard these doses when governments and peoples in the EU are reluctant to use them. Ursula von der Leyen seems to have a special gift for poor PR, and threatening to hoard vaccines they don’t want is just daft.

There must now be the distinct and bizarre risk of a European “vaccine lake”, refrigerated warehouses full of AZ vaccines urgently required by the UK, and indeed other nations, but going nowhere because many in Europe believe an injection will kill them. It is obscene. If the EU diverted the doses to Brazil, the Philippines and South Africa, say, there might be some moral force to the blockade. To have these precious doses of life-saving material waiting for a change in German and French public opinion is absurd.

It should give no one any pleasure to hear Dominic Cummings describe the EU’s efforts on mass vaccination as a project designed to fail. Yet the EU did not cover itself in glory for much of the Covid crisis, despite outstanding achievements at national level, such as the German test and trace regime. From the beginning, when Italy was left exposed and unaided for too long, when borders were summarily closed, and on to the latest confusions about the AZ vaccine, a pattern has emerged of nations panicking and going their own way, with the European Commission often trying to catch up with events and apologise for its failures. It might be true that the lesson of all that is “More Europe”, with the EU given power to organise and coordinate effectively, but it’s not a case that will just make itself, and it seems in poor taste to mention it.

Like a coronavirus “mutation of concern”, this mixing of the political DNA of Brexit and Covid is proving especially virulent. Vaccine resistance in the EU is giving rise to a third wave of infections across Europe, and that is bad news for Britain and the world. It may even damage vaccine acceptance in the UK.

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Rationally, it would be in Britain’s own interest to have its closest neighbours well vaccinated and not developing into Covid sinks, incubating new, ever more dangerous variants. It would be the kind of thing friendly neighbouring states would do for one another. Instead we seem to have stumbled into a kind of cold war.