During the long, disturbing debate on Britain’s exit from the European Union, one of the few positions on which the EU never wavered was the insistence that there could be no barrier to trade between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. . It was feared that a ‘hard border’ across the island would pose a serious threat to security in the region. By the end of 2020, Britain and the EU had finally signed a trade agreement that kept the Irish border open. It only took the EU a month to try to close it.
Last Friday, as part of an effort to curb vaccine exports, the EU unveiled an article from the Brexit withdrawal agreement to prevent COVID-19 vaccines from entering Northern Ireland from the EU – a step that could lead to the introduction of checks. on the border. The article allows parts of the agreement to be unilaterally exceeded to prevent serious societal problems, and the EU’s feared that Northern Ireland, amid shortages of vaccines, would be used as a backdoor for the supply of European vaccines to the United Kingdom.
The EU backed down on the plan within hours after being blown up by the British and Irish governments, but the debacle showed that there were limits to the group’s commitment to free trade and open borders, at least during ‘ a pandemic. ‘Vaccination nationalism’ is here, and it’s likely to stay for a while.
Vaccinationalism is the idea that, instead of working together to defeat the virus as quickly as possible, countries will compete with each other and prioritize their own populations. The dynamics are particularly clear between the EU and the UK. The context for the most recent dispute is that the explosion of vaccines in the EU is not going well. While the UK now delivered 16.2 doses per 100 people and the US 10.5, Germany spent just 3.6 and France only 2.7, according to Our World in Data. Denmark, the leading country of vaccinations in the bloc, delivered just 5.2 shots per 100 people. (These are total shots, not complete vaccinations, that require two doses.) There are a number of reasons for the delay. Although the EU signed contracts for more than 2 billion vaccines, it was slower than other developed countries to approve the drugs. For example, while the UK approved the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine on 2 December and the US followed the following week, the EU only granted approval on 21 December. It was also slower to negotiate contracts with drug manufacturers. Unlike the US, EU drug producers provided only partial protection for liability in the event of side effects, which also delayed negotiations. Although there has been enough criticism of the US government’s COVID response over the past year, it has been more proactive than other governments in contracting facilities to provide ‘fill and finish’ services to drive vaccines to market. In fact, Johnson & Johnson recently announced that they would send vaccines for Europe to the United States for filling and completion, prompting the EU’s fears of further delays.
In all these processes, the structure of the EU – which requires input from member states, with the emphasis on burden and profit sharing – is not an advantage in terms of efficiency. On the other hand, it is an advantage for smaller, less affluent European countries that are likely to lag even further behind if they are expected to negotiate on their own.
Brexiters quickly used the EU struggle as justification. British Health Secretary Matt Hancock has argued that the rapid approval and distribution process in the UK shows the benefits of Brexit. This is not true: the approval of the Pfizer vaccine took place while the UK was still under EU regulations, allowing Member States to carry out their own emergency approvals. And as European officials have pointed out, BioNTech, the German co-developer of the vaccine, has received significant EU funding for its research. Yet the current state of affairs in the vaccine wars feels at least like the kind of thing Voters on leave have tried to get away from, and Brexit politicians are likely to continue to play it.
Things started to get really ugly at the end of January when the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca announced that it would reduce the initial delivery of its recently approved EU vaccine to 31 million doses by 80 million by the end of March due to delays in the production of one of its European plants, and has been accused by the EU of breach of contract. To make matters worse, the UK, where AstraZeneca is based, and where the vaccine has been approved since the end of December, has two factories operating at full capacity, and will have no shortages. AstraZeneca has refused to ship vaccines produced in the UK to the mainland, prompting anger from EU officials who say Britain has no inherent right to vaccines produced on its soil. It comes in addition to news that Pfizer is also experiencing delays in its European plants.
Under public pressure to address the delays, the EU has adopted a regulation instructing customs authorities to block the export of vaccines to 100 countries around the world unless they receive explicit permission from EU governments. Most developing countries, including countries that are part of the World Health Organization’s COVAX vaccine distribution scheme, will not be affected by the rule, but the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and Australia will be affected.
The EU move has been criticized by World Health Organization leaders as an example of ‘vaccine nationalism’, and it is difficult to argue with the description. But is there not also a form of ‘nationalism’ in the argument that only the EU should suffer under European signs in European factories if drugs are only produced next door?
Prashant Yadav, who studies global health care chains at the Center for Global Development, says the EU case “raises very difficult questions” about the future of drug distribution worldwide. “We have to respect that the vaccine supply chains are intrinsically global,” he says. ‘But what does a global supply chain mean? If you have a deficit on one of your sites, who bears the impact of the deficit? ‘Yadav suggests that a real-world model needs a “turntable” model where the impact is shared equally by all parties. In other words, if the production of a factory is 10 percent short, all the countries that would receive the drug from the factory will get a decrease of ten percent.
“If only one region carries the impact, you have accepted that the supply chain is not really global,” says Yadav.
Health officials are worried that the move by the EU will have a tantalizing effect as more countries impose export bans to protect their supplies. This can have the most damaging effect in less developed countries that are already having problems securing the vaccine. In a speech at the World Economic Forum last week, Cyril Ramaphosa, President of South Africa, disapproved of vaccine nationalism, saying: ‘Rich countries in the world hold these vaccines and we say’ Let the excess vaccines you order and store , free. ‘There is simply no need for a country with about 40 million people to obtain 120 million doses or even 160 million, and yet the world needs access to the vaccines. ‘
The resulting shortages are not just a problem confined to the poorer countries. New, more dangerous variants of the virus have recently emerged in South Africa and Brazil, which could hamper global efforts to tame the pandemic as they spread.
Yadav is also concerned that, although the specific disputes caused by the EU’s steps can still be resolved, the precedent it creates will harm the overall effectiveness of vaccine efforts in the future.
“Everyone will remember it for decades,” he says.