BERLIN (Reuters) – German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said on Saturday he was angry that no more COVID-19 vaccines had been ordered last year as EU chief executive Ursula von der Leyen defended her renewed the European Commission’s record on its implementation.
EU countries have so far given first doses to just under 4% of their population, compared to 11% for the United States and almost 17% for Britain, according to Our World in Data. Von der Leyen is under fire due to the slow rollout of the EU.
“I’m angry about some of the decisions that were made last year,” Scholz told BBC Today’s program Today. “I think there was an opportunity to order more of the vaccines.”
Asked about von der Leyen’s responsibility for the slow rollout, Scholz, speaking in English, replied: “I think it is necessary for someone to learn the lesson, and it is also (true) for Europe. I think the European Union is strong. “
Scholz, a Social Democrat, and von der Leyen, a Christian Democrat, served in Germany’s ruling coalition until 2019, when she stopped taking over as president of the European Commission.
In an opinion piece presented in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung of Sunday, von der Leyen said that it was misleading to say that the conclusion of vaccine contracts would speed up its delivery earlier.
“The bottleneck lies elsewhere. The manufacture of a new vaccine is an incredibly complex undertaking,” she writes, adding: “among the hundreds of components needed, key ingredients worldwide are in short supply.”
Von der Leyen, who described the fight against the virus as ‘not a sprint, it’s a marathon’, added that ‘mutations worry us’.
“We need to prepare today for a scenario in which the virus can no longer be adequately suppressed with current vaccines,” she said.
(Written by Paul Carrel; Edited by Nick Macfie)