Boris Johnson to call EU leaders in bid to sop vaccine export ban
Boris Johnson is preparing to speak to EU leaders this week as a row over coronavirus vaccine supplies rumbles on.
The Prime Minister is expected to hold a meeting with his European counterparts to try and de-escalate tensions in the lead up to an EU’s leaders summit on Thursday.
He will also speak to leaders in one-on-one phone calls in the preceding days as he aims to stop the EU blocking exports to the UK of the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab.
Brussels wants doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine that is being produced in the Netherlands to stay in the EU, instead of being exported to the UK as planned.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told a group of German newspapers on Saturday that the EU has “the possibility to forbid planned exports” if AstraZeneca insists on meeting its commitments and sending the jabs to the UK.
Von der Leyen said: “That is the message to AstraZeneca, ‘You fulfil your contract with Europe before you start delivering to other countries’.”
The EU has complained that it has not received any vaccines from manufacturing sites in the UK, while 10m have gone the other way.
AstraZeneca said vaccines slated to go to the EU had been delayed because of the “complexity of the production process”.
The UK also signed far more extensive contracts for delivery of shipments from AstraZeneca much earlier than the EU.
An EU official told Reuters: “The Brits are insisting that the Halix plant in the Netherlands must deliver the drug substance produced there to them. That doesn’t work. What is produced in Halix has to go to the EU.”
The UK yesterday warned Brussels that banning vaccine exports would be “very damaging” for the EU’s reputation, with defence secretary Ben Wallace telling the bloc that the “world is watching”.
Wallace said that the EU’s threats to block vaccine shipments to Britain, which was inflamed political tensions, could “undermine” vaccine supplies across the globe.
He told Sky News: ““If contracts get broken that is a very damaging thing to happen for a trading bloc that prides itself on the rule of law, that prides itself on following contracts and on being an open trading bloc and I think the Commission knows deep down the world is watching deep down.
“How the vaccine is manufactured involves countries not just in Europe, not just in the UK but further afield in places such as India. If the Commission starts to unpick that they’ll undermine not just their own citizens chances of getting vaccines but also many countries sound the world.”
It comes as EU leaders have been criticised for being slow to roll out the vaccines.
Major nations like Germany, the Netherlands and France have only jabbed around one-in-ten citizens.
The UK, on the other hand, has now vaccinated over half of its adult population.
New figures from YouGov show that people across the EU are now wary of taking the AstraZeneca vaccine, after comments from EU politicians falsely questioning the efficacy of the jab and a quickly overturned ban last week.
The survey showed 55 per cent of Germans, 61 per cent of the French, 52 per cent of Spanish people and 43 per cent of Italians now see the vaccine as unsafe.
The figures showed that decisions by major European countries to temporarily ban the vaccines have severely dented trust in the jab, with the amount of pepole saying it is unsafe sharply rising over the past two weeks.
The 17 countries – including Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Ireland – banned the jab due to unfounded concerns over vaccine-induced blood clots.
The European medicines regulator found there to be no evidence of increased blood clots from the vaccine.