"On the day Britain's vaccine tsar announced the deal securing 40 million doses of the Pfizer jab, her Brussels opposite number was literally talking about the price of fish.
It was July 20, and while Kate Bingham was giving the UK a stunning head-start, Stella Kyriakides, the European commissioner in charge of the bloc's inoculation plan, was embroiled in an intractable meeting of the EU's Agriculture and Fisheries Council.
A further four months would elapse before the EU managed to place its own order with Pfizer....
Trumpeted at the outset as a forceful show of EU solidarity, the European Commission's strategy of procuring vaccines for its 446 million citizens has curdled into rancour, with the bloc accused of being too slow, too bureaucratic and in thrall to European solidarity.
The missteps led to the bitter row between the bloc and AstraZeneca over the fine print of its contract, and has seen the EU attempt to block exports of the Pfizer jab to Britain. It has also led to embarrassment for pro-EU bulwarks such as French President Emmanuel Macron, whose foot-dragging has been blamed on his hopes that a jab produced by Paris-based pharmaceutical company Sanofi would dominate the global market.
Sanofi has said its product will not be ready before the end of this year at the earliest.
The fallout has been acrimonious. Smaller nations have accused larger ones of striking out on their own and hoarding jabs, while EU countries such as Hungary have lost patience with Brussels and bought millions of doses of Russia and China's unregulated jabs."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9205465/We-need-buy-freezers-fast-Thats-Jonathan-Van-Tam-told-No-10-Spring.html
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