Photographer: Alex Kraus / Bloomberg
Photographer: Alex Kraus / Bloomberg
Angela Merkel is starting to break down under the pressure of Germany’s bankrupt coronavirus vaccination program.
With the chancellor under public fire for the lack of Covid-19 blows and her strategy of delegating responsibility to The European Union seemed wrong, it was crucified when German prime ministers were asked for answers during a closed-door meeting in early January.
Being more angry than those involved have ever seen, she threatened to retaliate and make the officials’ mistakes public, shocking the participants in silence. On other occasions, she has come close to tears in public in recent weeks.
Angela Merkel arrives at a press conference about Covid-19 in Berlin on January 21.
Photographer: Michael Kappeler / POOL / AFP / Getty Images
“It breaks my heart to see how many people have died in nursing homes alone,” she said in a recent speech.
Such an emotion is extremely unusual for the sober physicist, who has faced one crisis after another in the 15 years since he led Europe’s largest economy. But as it prepares to hand over the chancellery after the September elections, the pandemic seems to be moving away from it. An opinion poll released last week demonstrates this. Only 11% of respondents considered Germany’s vaccination program to be working well, while 61% saw major shortcomings with the launch.
A reconstruction of the events for this story, which is based on information from government officials who asked not to be identified discussing private conversations inside the chancellery, shows that the country’s vaccine stumbles on Merkel’s fingerprint. Its European orientation has sparked conflicts within the German government, while at the same time relying on an overload. The European Commission has prevented the launch. A government spokesman declined to comment on internal deliberations.
The tension triggered a strong play in Brussels. The EU is taking on AstraZeneca Plc and other pharmaceutical companies and imposing export controls in a total or no response to its perceived shortcomings.
The EU is chasing the vaccine race
Cumulative doses administered to 100 people
Source: Data collected by Bloomberg
Germany’s effort started quite well. The Merkel government has supported the development of the vaccine at an early stage, gaining a leap over other countries.
In April, Health Minister Jens Spahn – Merkel’s longtime opponent – contacted BioNTech SE and provided financial assistance. In September, the German start up received € 375 million ($ 450 million) in research funding, about three times higher than its own public listing at the end of 2019. In June, Germany invested 300 million euros in another German start up, CureVac NV, acquiring a stake and rejecting an approach of the Trump administration.
But behind the scenes, a political struggle erupted.
Spahn had long been a thorn in the side of the chancellor. The ambitious conservative, 40 years old, sincerely criticized her refugee policy and was offered a place in her office in 2018 only reluctantly. The coronavirus crisis gave him a chance to raise his profile and he planned to take it.
Angela Merkel and Jens Spahn at the Bundestag on January 13.
Photographer: John MacDougall / AFP / Getty Images
In the first weeks of the pandemic, Spahn held press conferences almost daily, until the chancellery told him to come out of the spotlight. In mid-March, Merkel put the crisis under her wing, and Germany’s relatively easy blockade contained the spread. The impression was that Merkel saved the day again.
Blushing at this success, she looked to Germany’s EU presidency in the second half of 2020. There were big issues to address, such as the difficult Brexit negotiations and the important recovery fund.
But Spahn remained active. In June, it concluded a vaccination alliance with France, Italy and the Netherlands. The goal was to provide as many doses as possible, and on June 13, the group signed a preliminary contract with AstraZeneca for 400 million photos. What could have been good news set off alarm bells in Berlin and Brussels.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has called on the chancellery to end Spahn’s alliance. Merkel’s former defense minister has made it clear to the chancellor that Spahn’s effort could overshadow Germany’s EU presidency.
As an employed multilateralist, he did not want to be reminded that he had saved Germans at the expense of the rest of the EU. Shortly afterwards, Spahn apologized for the initiative.
“We think it makes sense for the commission to take the lead in this process,” Spahn and his three counterparts said in a letter – which was released to the media in January as part of a campaign to pressure Merkel.
Visitors are waiting to receive doses of Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine at a vaccination site in Wurzburg, Germany.
Photographer: Alex Kraus / Bloomberg
Meanwhile, the United States was throwing money into Operation Warp Speed. In May, the Trump administration promised as much as $ 1.2 billion in funding for the AstraZeneca vaccine project. In July, the United States agreed to pay $ 1.95 billion for 100 million doses of BioNTech vaccine, with the option to purchase another 500 million.
Almost simultaneously with the US agreement, the UK also agreed to buy 30 million doses from BioNTech and its partner. Pfizer Inc.
Read more: EU flubbed vaccine Roll Risks yet another existential crisis
Few were happening in Brussels. In July, the Commission rejected a BioNTech bid for 500 million doses amid falling prices and concerns about cold storage for photographs.
By the end of the summer, the chancellery was increasingly alarmed by slow progress, and Merkel asked von der Leyen to speed things up. At the end of August, the Commission signed an agreement with AstraZeneca.
It was not until November 20 that an EU agreement with BioNTech was finalized, 11 days after the company announced that its vaccine candidate was 90% more effective in clinical trials.
Even that was a struggle. Germany had to guarantee that it would last up to 100 million doses and added 192 million euros to the amount of EU money for virus transactions. But as more studies have highlighted the benefits of the shooting, other Member States have aligned, and Germany’s allocation has more than halved.
Meanwhile, a bilateral agreement that Spahn signed with BioNTech on September 8 for 30 million doses exclusively for Germany has been blocked in bureaucracy.
Package management
German conservatives are ahead in the polls, but the gap is narrowing
Source: Infratest dimap
“The process in Europe has certainly not been as fast and straightforward as in other countries,” said Ugur Sahin, executive director of BioNTech. Spiegel magazine, blaming the cumbersome bureaucracy of the EU and a careless approach. “It seems that it was an attitude of: we will get enough, it will not be so bad, we have everything under control.”
As the EU procurement process began to flow, Merkel was busy posing as a vaccine equity advocate. In June, it announced that Germany would provide 600 million euros Gavi Alliance, plus 100 million euros for developing countries.
The global approach makes scientific sense, and there is certainly a long way to go before Germany – even better than many other countries – can recover.
It was not until November 20 that an EU agreement with BioNTech was finalized.
Photographer: Alex Kraus / Bloomberg
But from a political point of view, it made them ally their wrinkles, especially since they were looking ahead to the September elections. Bavarian state leader Markus Soeder – a leadership competitor to succeed her as chancellor – she supported Merkel’s European course, but remarked: “It’s also not wrong to care about your own country.”
To alleviate tensions, Merkel will hold a German vaccine summit on Monday, but the pressure remains palpable. When recently asked if she would be willing to apologize for her mistakes, she deviated and instead responded with a lecture on the complex production process, including the role of saline.
“Of course we could have ordered more earlier,” Spahn said Friday, refusing to point the finger at Merkel or anyone else. “The virus is our opponent, not the pharmaceutical industry and not each other.”
– With the assistance of Raymond Colitt and Hayley Warren