The EU, The Vaccine, and Exports

If the EU had gone down the UK route they would have financed both vaccine development and factory construction in their own countries with a capacity sufficient for their own needs. This is not a matter of the UK forcing it’s way to the front of the queue; the UK is creating the supply that others then queue up for!

Because the UK does not have the capacity to supply others at present, it licenses other countries to produce the AZ vaccine on condition that, like the UK, they produce and sell at cost. To look at physical exports and ignore this licensing programme is highly misleading.

The AZ vaccine exists because of the UK government. Philanthropic we may be, but we not unreasonably thought that, having paid for its development as well as its production, the UK taxpayers should get it first.

The UK actually brought AZ into production partnership with Oxford, where the vaccine was developed, precisely because of fears of vaccine nationalism. They reached a production understanding long before the vaccine passed its clinical trials, the government accepting all the risks involved.

Oddly enough, the anticipated nationalism was from Trump's USA, which was why the UK didn’t want Oxford going into partnership with a US firm as originally intended. Obviously, AZ is part Swedish and some of its production is in the EU. As it turns out, maybe we should have expected nationalism from the EU too.

At the same time the UK ordered several other vaccines from various different sources, including some in the EU, gambling that these vaccines would succeed. Any EU country or the EU Commission could have placed similar orders at the same time, but for whatever reasons they decided not to. Once those EU firms had accepted UK contracts they would not expect to be prevented from fulfilling them, any more than AZ expected the EU to try to prevent them fulfilling their contract with the UK.

The EU meanwhile spent a couple of months beating down AZ’s already cost-based price and finally placed its order, if I recall correctly, when the vaccine was already in third phase trials, nevertheless still forcing risk responsibility on to the firm. This meant they got a ‘best efforts’ contract because no company managers in their right mind would definitively guarantee supplies when they were bearing all the risk as well as not making a profit.

We are now witnessing the unedifying spectacle of the EU refusing to admit its own incompetence and seeking to deflect blame on to an external ‘enemy’ who happens to have produced the vaccine in the first place.

Some want to consider financing development of the Oxford vaccine ‘getting lucky’. That is up to them, I suppose. Some people would call it a sound investment of public funds. No risk, no reward. What prevented EU countries doing the same?

It should however be obvious even to an EU supporter that the UK’s involvement in the AZ vaccine is a lot more more than just a contractual arrangement. The UK would hardly have spent all that money in order to export the vaccine at cost before UK needs were met.

Is the EU supposed to have been unaware of this history? Did they not read the contract they signed with AZ? Did they not know that the UK plant had gone through the same production difficulties as the EU plant, just three months earlier?

I’m sorry, but the Commission are negligent, incompetent or both and behaving in their usual belligerent and litigious manner as soon as their failings are exposed. It would never, I suppose, occur to them to say, “I’m sorry, we screwed up, can you help us out?”