Hello, I'm Paige and this is the Eurointelligence podcast covering current affairs in the EU and Eurozone.

I'm joined by Wolfgang and Susanna, directors of Eurointelligence in Oxford.

Guys, I think we're looking again at vaccines this week.

Wolfgang, why should people be angry about vaccination campaigns and their slow rollout?

It looks like they're going from one mess into another.

We wrote about the procurement problems fairly early.

And I have to say in hindsight, yes, this was a big problem,

but it was not a, I would characterize this as a serious but honest mistake.

You know, the EU has never done this before.

They had no experience with the kind of

contracts they had to do with manufacturers. You know, I don't think we should engage very much

in blaming anything, but the whole thing started that ministers wanted the EU to do something

without preparing the EU for this task. So, you know, this is not something where we would hyperventilate

about. But what

happened this week is different. The smear campaign that they run against AstraZeneca was actually,

you know, I'd say this was downright evil because what it does is you undermine confidence,

not just in one particular vaccine, but in the entire process of vaccination,

because people don't have a choice.

There's no consumer choice for vaccines, so people get whatever they're offered.

And if you blacklist or if you smear one vaccine, then you undermine the entire process.

Now, it would still not be great to undermine a vaccine if people

had a choice. You shouldn't play industrial policy with a process like that. But in this case,

...