How did Europe fall behind in the vaccine race?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 11 February 2021
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On June the 12th of last year the 27 health ministers of the European union signed off on a plan to buy vaccines on behalf of all the EU’s member countries. The aim was to secure enough doses to immunise all of its 450 million citizens. But the delivery and vaccination programme has lagged far behind countries like the UK and US. Tanya Beckett finds out why.
(Waiting to be vaccinated at Santa Maria Hospital in Lisbon, Portugal. Photo: Patricia de Melo Moreiro /Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the inquiry. I'm Tanya Beckett, each week one question for expert witnesses and an answer. |
| 0:13.4 | It's the middle of June last year and four European countries, Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands |
| 0:21.2 | are on the brink of signing a joint deal to buy the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. But there's a problem. |
| 0:30.4 | Other European countries think it would be better if this kind of deal was done by the European Union. |
| 0:36.4 | So it's decided to pass all vaccine negotiation to the civil servants of the European Commission. |
| 0:43.6 | One month goes by and no more vaccine deals are signed. Two months and finally the original |
| 0:52.4 | deal signed with AstraZeneca is waived through. Then in September, after three months the EU manages |
| 1:01.2 | to get a second deal over the line. In the weeks that follow it secures enough doses of |
| 1:08.4 | vaccine to immunise the European Union population several times over. But the delivery of those vaccines |
| 1:15.4 | to the EU has been delayed and you can see it in the vaccination figures. The UK has given 17% |
| 1:24.0 | of its population at least one job and the US 9%. But in the EU that figure is 3%. |
| 1:34.8 | So in this week's inquiry we're asking how did Europe fall behind in the vaccine race? |
| 1:42.0 | Part 1. The Tanker |
| 1:53.2 | EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said that when it comes to getting hold of a vaccine |
| 1:59.2 | a country on its own can act more like a speedboat, whereas the EU is more akin to a tanker. |
| 2:06.4 | Our first expert witness is Guntram Wurf, director at the Brugel-Think Tank in Brussels. |
| 2:14.0 | I would say the EU essentially had almost no structures in place when the pandemic started especially |
| 2:20.6 | it had no competence and no structures whatsoever for the development and the procurement and the |
| 2:27.9 | purchase of vaccines. The EU has a reputation for cumbersome decision making at the best of times |
| 2:35.2 | but with no established way to get countries to agree on how to get hold of vaccines |
| 2:41.3 | it was several months after the start of the pandemic before European countries were able to agree |
| 2:47.8 | to buy as a group. But that was really just the start of the problem. Different member countries |
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