In April last year, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen added Europe to a global effort to ensure equitable access to a vaccine, which she said would be deployed “in every corner of the globe.” ”.
Despite promising billions of dollars for the World Health Organization (WHO) scheme and publicly endorsing it, European Union officials and member states have repeatedly held elections that have undermined the campaign, internal documents seen by Reuters and interviews with EU officials and diplomats show.
One year after its launch, Europe and the rest of the world have not yet donated a single dose through the vaccine scheme, which is part of an unprecedented effort to distribute vaccines, tests and medicines to combat the pandemic. Diplomats say Europe’s ambivalence stemmed in part from a lack of supply and a weak start to the global campaign, but also from concerns that EU efforts would go unnoticed in a vaccine diplomacy war in which highly publicized promises from China and Russia have won. land, even on their own. backyard.
The program, co-led by international agencies and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), is a bulk purchasing platform to share doses worldwide. But once the administration of former US President Donald Trump turned its back on the WHO, the plan, called COVAX, slowed to gain support and focused on using funds from rich countries to buy doses for the least developed.
Von der Leyen presented Europe’s support for the COVAX campaign as a gesture of international unity. EU officials are privately casting the bloc’s vaccine targets in a less altruistic light.
“It’s also about visibility,” Ilze Juhansone, the EU’s secretary general and senior Commission official, told ambassadors at a meeting in Brussels in February, according to a diplomatic note seen by Reuters. Juhansone declined to comment.
An elderly diplomat said many of those who attended the meeting felt that Europe, which is by far the largest exporter of vaccines in the West, had targets that would be better served by plastering “several blue flags with yellow stars ”on vaccine packages and their delivery itself, rather than through COVAX.
Brussels, which coordinates vaccination agreements with its members, has set aside a huge surplus – 2.6 billion doses for a population of 450 million so far. He pledged almost 2.5 billion euros ($ 3 billion) in support of COVAX. This made the EU the largest funder until the administration of US President Joe Biden promised $ 4 billion this year to the plan, which aims to distribute 2 billion doses by the end of the year.
But the supply of Europe’s own people has been delayed, and despite funding, the EU and its 27 governments have prevented COVAX in several ways. Like other rich countries, EU nations have decided not to buy their own vaccines through COVAX and have competed with it to buy photos when supplies were tight. All but Germany offered less money to the general program than was requested.
Moreover, Europe has promoted a parallel vaccine donation system that it will run on its own to raise the EU’s profile.
“There is a huge frustration because there is a feeling that the race is starting now, but we are not really out of the starting blocks,” a senior diplomat told Reuters.
“We spend money on COVAX and profitability in terms of political visibility is zero.”
Russia says it wants to supply vaccines directly to countries. China has promised support for COVAX. But both Moscow and Beijing have separate agreements to deliver more than 1 billion doses to Africa, Latin America and EU partners such as Turkey, Egypt, Morocco and the Balkan states that are candidates for bloc accession.
Most doses will take time to be administered, but Russia and China have already exported COVAX deliveries of about 40 million doses about twice.
COVAX was also hit in March by restrictions on exports of vaccines from India, which slowed supply from its main supplier of fire.
The head of WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has repeatedly called on rich countries to give up nationalist impulses and share vaccines, calling the current situation a “shocking imbalance”. The non-EU UK, for example, has already injected as many shots as COVAX has delivered to more than 100 countries.
COVAX officials told Reuters that they had received enough funds by the end of last year, but they came later than expected.
A spokeswoman for GAVI, the vaccine alliance that manages the scheme and speaks for COVAX on such issues, said EU support was “unequivocal” and expects the doses to be donated soon. The WHO added that von der Leyen’s personal support was “invaluable”.
A spokesman for the European Commission told Reuters that COVAX has been very successful in structuring global collaboration and delivering millions of doses. He called the program “our best vehicle for providing international vaccine solidarity” and “the EU’s key channel for sharing vaccines”.
WAIT COVAX
Part of the difficulty of COVAX is structural. Shortly after its inception, the richest countries sealed orders in advance with drug companies to secure doses as they became available. The vaccination scheme has always been based on money-rich states, which they have been slow to grant.
COVAX aims to be a platform for countries that buy vaccines, which would give it bargaining power and allow it to distribute doses among the most needy around the world. Recognizing that the supply would be tight, its original purpose was to distribute doses to at least 20% of the population of each country to cover those most at risk.
At an internal meeting last July, a European Commission official told ambassadors that Member States should not buy their fires through COVAX because they will come too slowly, diplomatic notes show. The Commission subsequently set a target of vaccinating 70% of EU adults by the end of September.
COVAX changed some conditions next month to try to persuade rich nations to join, but no EU country has signed up to use the platform for their vaccination actions. The EU has given COVAX financial guarantees to pay for vaccines, but it has made it even more difficult for COVAX to do so, arranging to buy far more doses than the block needed.
In November, the EU promised more money to COVAX, but only after signing contracts with vaccine manufacturers for almost 1.5 billion doses – more than half of Brussels’ estimate of global production capacity for this year, shows internal documents.
Even though Europe reserved such a large share, the Commission told diplomats at a meeting that month that COVAX was too slow to procure doses.
The Commission then raised the possibility of setting up its own mechanism for sending fires to poor countries outside the EU.
“EUROPE TEAM”
Within a month, France had begun to implement this plan. The images will be sent directly from the producers – possibly before the start of deliveries through COVAX – and labeled as “Team Europe” donations, it was said in a draft plan.
The move, revealed at the time by Reuters, provoked a shout from COVAX officials.
One told Reuters in April that the plan was driven by France’s desire to shoot in Africa, where France had previously had colonies and felt colonialism. French diplomats said they have never shown a preference for any country, and Africa needs it most.
European Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said in mid-January that the EU’s own plan would continue – as COVAX was not yet fully operational. The countries it will focus on would include the Western Balkans, the EU’s southern and eastern neighbors and Africa.
The following month, with more than 2 billion doses reserved, but with actual deliveries affected by production problems, the EU doubled COVAX funding to 1 billion euros. Russia and China have already administered millions of doses worldwide. COVAX hasn’t delivered any yet. And French President Emmanuel Macron was publicly losing his temper.
Europe and the United States should quickly send enough vaccines to Africa to inoculate the continent’s health workers or risk losing the influence of Russia and China, Macron said at a security conference, without specifying how he would these donations must be made.
Unless rich countries speed up deliveries, “our friends in Africa, under the justified pressure of their people, will buy doses from the Chinese and Russians,” Macron told the conference. “And the strength of the West will be a concept and not a reality.”
Despite Macron’s urgency, France’s financial support for the WHO’s general program – to cover tests and treatments, as well as vaccines – was limited.
WHO called on countries to make contributions commensurate with their economic power. France has committed $ 190 million – about 13 percent of the $ 1.2 billion requested, according to a March 26 WHO document.
Other EU countries are also well below expected contributions; some gave zero. But Germany has helped offset the $ 2.6 billion in public employment by well over $ 2 billion.
French diplomats say they expect the country’s contributions to increase soon.
“IN THIS GAME”
On February 24, COVAX delivered its first vaccines. The EU has softened its criticism.
At a meeting on 9 March, at the height of the European Union’s own problems in procuring fire for its own citizens, a Commission official told diplomats that COVAX is the main tool for donating vaccines to other countries.
But the official said Europe still needed its own mechanism, as COVAX had money, but only a small portion of the photos it needed. And the EU scheme would have “the advantage of giving us visibility,” the official said.
At the same meeting, EU ambassadors were presented with data compiled by the EU’s foreign affairs service, which they said revealed how far the bloc’s vaccine diplomacy lags behind its competitors.
They learned that Russia had orders for 645 million doses of its Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine with dozens of countries and that China was delivering millions of doses to its EU neighbors, the data show.
“We are completely out of this game,” one of the diplomats there told Reuters.
Reuters could not confirm the exact data. But figures from UNICEF, which works with COVAX to deliver vaccines, show that Russia has offers to deliver nearly 600 million doses, including to EU countries. China has offers to sell about 800 million doses, including agreements with European countries such as Serbia, Ukraine and Albania.
Later that month, top EU diplomat Josep Borrell sincerely emphasized: “The EU is the main driver behind COVAX,” he wrote in a blog on March 26th. “But we do not get recognition that countries that use bilateral vaccine diplomacy do.”
On Tuesday, the EU Commission said the EU would share more than half a million doses with Balkan countries starting in May through the EU scheme. That was two weeks after COVAX delivered the first photos in the region.
($ 1 = $ 0.8282)
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