It’s pretty clear that the EU has not exactly behaved well in recent weeks, during its row with AstraZeneca over the Oxford vaccine. First the German press pushed out an unsubstantiated claim that the vaccine had extremely low efficacy rates among the elderly. Then the EU threatened to introduce an export ban to prevent other countries receiving their doses. And now the EU is pushing AstraZeneca to divert supplies intended for the UK to Europe – to make up for the fact that the bloc dithered for three months before striking its own deal with the company.
Meanwhile the UK, so far at least, has pretty much kept out of the row. So Mr S was surprised to see the UK’s own broadcaster, the BBC, take a ‘both sides are wrong’ approach to the dispute this morning. Speaking on Twitter, the BBC’s Europe editor, Katya Adler, hit out at Boris Johnson’s government for ‘berating’ the EU and suggested that the UK was equally guilty of ‘hypocrisy’. Adler was commenting on an article on Politico, which reported that the UK had banned the export of some medicines last year.
The only problem is that the BBC editor’s line appears to be cobblers. For starters, Boris Johnson’s government hasn’t really ‘berated’ the EU at all. Only yesterday, the PM refused to wade into the row, and merely stressed the importance of international cooperation.
Secondly, there doesn’t appear to be much equivalence between the EU’s recent behaviour and the UK medicine ban. The Politico story itself notes that the UK ban only covers supplies already intended for UK patients, to prevent middlemen making a quick buck by hawking the medicines elsewhere. Any medicines manufactured for export are exempt and allowed to leave the UK. In other words, French patients would still be able to receive any medicines manufactured in the UK. The EU, on the other hand, appears to be mulling an export ban simply to prevent other countries’ orders being fulfilled.
Unfortunately it seems to Mr S like the BBC is still on auto-pilot when it comes to its Europe coverage, and has missed the rather more obvious story: that it’s the EU currently behaving like a playground bully…
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