UK summons EU officials over ‘false’ vaccine claims

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has blasted claims by a senior Eurocrat that the UK is hampering the bloc’s vaccine rollout, calling the questionable assertions ‘completely false’. Charles Michel, president of the European Council, initially argued that Britain had imposed an ‘outright ban on the export of vaccines or vaccine components’ leaving the country in an EU blog on Tuesday. (Michel then subtly soften his claim after commentators pointed out there was no such ‘outright ban’, instead he said there were ‘different ways of imposing bans or restrictions on vaccines’.)

But London was having none of it. Raab came out fighting on Tuesday night, insisting that ‘any references to a UK export ban or any restrictions on vaccines are completely false’ and demanding that EU officials appear before the Foreign Office on Wednesday to explain themselves.  

It’s worth bearing in mind the context of this latest spat. Late last week, Italy invoked an EU provision that allowed the country to block the export of a quarter of a million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine bound for Australia.