The EU's shameful approach to Putin reveals the extreme weakness of its position in the Covid battle

While European leaders schmooze a brutal Russian regime, EU citizens must pay the price for a grossly incompetent vaccination programme

Source - Daily Telegraph 31/03/21

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Dangerous reactions emanating from chemical substances created in Russian laboratories are hardly unknown in Europe.

Not only is the case of the Salisbury poisonings fresh in the memory, but it took German medical expertise to nurse Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, back to health after last year’s unfortunate incident of the Novichok in the underpants.

Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, led European condemnation of that assassination attempt, accusing Vladimir Putin’s regime of “attempted murder by poisoning” and “an attack on the fundamental values and basic rights to which we are committed”.

Not long ago, EU leaders were also taking a tough line against the notion of relying on Putin for Covid vaccinations. In November, when bad-boy Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán first did a deal to import the unlicensed Sputnik V jab, the European Commission warned member states against following his example, saying it could damage public confidence in vaccines more generally.

So for Ms Merkel and Emmanuel Macron, the President of France, to find themselves on a video phone call with Putin to discuss vaccine “cooperation” – a fine euphemism for importing millions of doses of Sputnik – shows how the mighty have fallen.

Only a few weeks ago Ms Merkel was redoubling her condemnation of Russia over the treatment of Navalny, branding the prison sentence handed down to him upon his return there as “far from any rule of law standards” and demanding his immediate release.

And only a few days ago France’s foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian accused Moscow of using its Sputnik vaccine to advance an expansionist political agenda, noting: “In terms of how it is managed, it is more a means of propaganda and aggressive diplomacy than a means of solidarity and health aid.”

If that is so then surely Mr Putin must today be reflecting how well the plan is working. To have the two leading EU nations eating out of the palm of his hand is a remarkable coup for him.

The Sputnik jab has still not been licensed as safe for use by the European Medicines Agency, in contrast to the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which has been.

Yet it is the Oxford-AstraZeneca product – already used safely and to great effect on more than 15 million Britons – that is on the receiving end of an endless stream of negative briefings from inside the EU. Germany has again moved to restrict its use on the basis of a tiny number of blood clots, even as the European Commission is aggressively demanding a greater supply from the company.

The sad reality now is that the repeated safety and efficacy scares about the vaccines and doubts about the good faith of its manufacturer pushed by Paris and Berlin – and thus far always proven to be ill-founded – have probably turned European public opinion against it permanently.

Polling by YouGov has found that the vaccine is seen as unsafe by a majority of people Germany, France, Italy and Spain, while their confidence in the Pfizer and Moderna alternatives is much higher.

Given the shortage of vaccine supply across the EU, this irrational view – leading to millions of AstraZeneca doses sitting unused in fridges – is going to cost thousands of lives. As Boris Johnson recently remarked, the AstraZeneca vaccine is safe but getting Covid isn’t.

In the UK the number of Covid deaths reported in the past two days was 23 and 56 respectively. In Germany it was 180 and 250. In France it was 360 and 381. One would have thought that ought to be sufficient to generate headlines about safety fears over not using a tested and available vaccine. But with Merkel and Macron exploiting the bully pulpit of office to wage a propaganda war against the “British” vaccine, that is an angle left largely unexplored.

Over the weekend the final fig leaf still preserving EU dignity over vaccines was stripped away as the UK happily steamed past it on the percentage of the population fully vaccinated (having received two doses). The gulf in vital first doses is of course where the real damage has been done, with just 11 per cent of EU citizens having had a jab compared to more than half of Brits.

One hardly needs to be a conspiracy theorist to start to wonder whether AstraZeneca’s agreement that it would distribute its vaccine on a not-for-profit basis was the equivalent of it painting a target on its back. Certainly the perfectly understandable hopes of other vaccine producers to make some money out of the whole heroic exercise is put in jeopardy if one product is available globally at a rock-bottom price.

In any event, where we are now is in the midst of a grotesque collective EU schmoozing of the most callous and threatening regime on the greater European land mass, while the biggest island off its shore just gets on with the job of protecting its citizens.

Angela Merkel’s distaste for Russian brutality is probably genuine. But her distaste for being shown-up by the Brits would appear to be a far more powerful emotion.