An awful lot has been said about the way that the European Union has tackled a COVID-19 pandemic,

especially its vaccination strategy. Just to give you a couple of examples from the podcast world,

last April, the New York Times, The Daily, released an episode with the name Europe's vaccination

problem. A month before, on the 18th of March, Voxes Worldly discussed what they called Europe's vaccination problem. A month before, on the 18th of March, Voxes Worldly

discuss what they called Europe's vaccine disaster. These are two different media outlets

outside of the EU looking at how Europe is tackling the COVID-19 pandemic. As you can guess,

their take is not super positive. But are they right?

Does Europe actually have a vaccination problem?

And if so, whose fault is it?

The latest figures from early June 2021 tell us that since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic,

the European Union and the European Economic Area have recorded over 32 million COVID-19 cases

and more than 725,000 COVID-19 deaths.

On the upside, the European Union has managed to secure 4.4 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines,

enough to inoculate its entire population 10 times over. Moreover, close to half of the

adult EU population has received at least one dose to date. Do these numbers tell the whole story?

Are they enough to pass a judgment on the efficacy of public action in the face of one of the

biggest challenges that the world has ever faced?

In today's episode, we take a look at how the EU has managed the COVID-19 pandemic

from a European perspective.

We talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Welcome to EU Untangled. Let's start at the beginning. And for that, I'm going to turn over to Harpa.

So she can tell us a little bit about what the EU has been doing to tackle this pandemic.

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