The last three months have seen a litany of humiliations for Brussels as its leaders try to procure and roll out much needed vaccines across the continent. Whether it’s been Ursula von der Leyen almost erecting a hard border in Ireland or Handelsblatt being briefed misinformation from a misread excel table, impounded meningitis jabs in Italy or doctors forced to destroy unwanted vaccines in Germany, every week seems to bring fresh ignominy and embarrassment. But now a new low appears to have been reached with today’s news that France and Germany are in negotiations to buy Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine from their implacable opponent Vladimir Putin.
Putin of course was the man who annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, whose officials had sanctions slapped on them by Brussels a mere four weeks ago after Alexei Navalny’s arrest and who once brought his black lab Koni to a meeting with Merkel to terrify her in 2007. Just ten days ago EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton was saying that Europe had ‘absolutely no need for Sputnik V’ adding that ‘we clearly have the capacity to deliver 300 to 350 million doses by the end of June and therefore by July 14 … we have the possibility of reaching continent-wide immunity.’ Emmanuel Macron himself warned last week that the west faces a ‘new world war’ as Russia and China deploy their Covid vaccine supplies while on Sunday Slovakia’s Prime Minister Igor Matovic was forced to resign over a secret deal to buy Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine.
Clearly something has now changed as Merkel, Macron and Putin all held a three-way video conference last night to discuss the possibility of buying after the vaccine. Germany, France, Spain, Canada and Scandinavian countries have all suspended use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab in middle-aged people, over fears of a rare clotting disease. Berlin’s evidence for this is that 31 people out of 2.7 million doses have suffered a blood clot meaning that Germans under the age of 60 will now no longer be recommended the jab even as case numbers continue to rise. And so despite Russia registering its Sputnik shot in August before large-scale clinical trials were conducted, it is now clearly seen as a safer choice in Europe with the regulator launching a rolling review of Sputnik V earlier this month, a step towards it being approved.
Mr S wonders where all this will end. Austria’s chancellor Sebastian Kurz has defended the Sputnik negotiations, arguing that: ‘The only thing that matters is whether the vaccine is effective and safe, not where it comes from.’ It is a shame then that such hard headed thinking does not extend to the AstraZeneca jab, backed by the World Health Organisation and Europe’s own regulator.
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