Why is Ursula von der Leyen willing to trigger a vaccines trade war over a coronavirus jab that many EU countries are not even using? writes James Crisp.
Source - Daily Telegraph - 17/03/21
The European Commission president is lashing out wildly – not for the first time – as she desperately tries to appear in control of the EU's vaccine crisis. The crisis has been worsened by the decision of 17 countries to suspend the use of the AstraZeneca jab over blood clot fears, despite the bloc's regulator deeming it safe.
Mrs von der Leyen has faced sustained criticism across the EU for its slow vaccine rollout and questions about the contracts her commission negotiated with pharmaceutical firms. In January she was forced to back down after moving to impose a hard border on the island of Ireland – the precise opposite of what the Brexit negotiations aimed to achieve – to enforce an export ban on Britain.
Despite that, EU governments are lumbered with a commission president who has shown herself to be out of her depth.
It would be far too complicated politically to replace Mrs von der Leyen, a candidate settled on by Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron, the EU's two most influential leaders, in 2019. Any replacement would have to be acceptable not only to the 27 heads of state and government but also to the pan-EU political alliances that make up the bloc.
With all the parts of the jigsaw of the EU's top jobs in place, getting rid of Mrs von der Leyen would only cause huge delays and complications when the union is trying to drag itself and its economies out of the pandemic. It is far simpler for the heads of EU governments to keep a chastised president in place than risk a stronger one demanding yet more powers for Brussels.
The European Parliament could theoretically hold a vote of no confidence in Mrs von der Leyen, but there is support for a tough line in vaccines in the parliament – in particular from her political family, the influential European People's Party.
Mrs von der Leyen pinned the blame for her failures on AstraZeneca failure to deliver promised vaccine supplies, which the company blames on production problems. She wants AstraZeneca vaccines manufactured in the firm's two British factories to be exported to the EU to make up the latest shortfall of 60 million doses.
The USA, which gets vaccines and vaccine components from EU factories, is also in the commission's sights. Brussels wants it to release 30 million AstraZeneca doses, which are not being used, for export. Other allies, such as Canada, raised concerns the last time the EU threatened an export ban by introducing new laws to make it possible.
Mrs von der Leyen has made great play of wanting to bolster the EU's "strategic autonomy", but Wednesday's move will undermine her efforts to rebuild the transatlantic relationship after Donald Trump's presidency and anger other allies.
She wants EU leaders to discuss her plans at their EU summit next week. It may turn out that they quietly put her back in her box. Or they may decide – like her – that a bracing bout of vaccine nationalism will prove a welcome distraction from their own failures.
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