BRUSSELS (PA) – European Union leaders are no longer meeting around a common oval table to promote their famous compromises. Instead, each of the 27 watches the other heads of state or government with suspicion through a video screen showing a mosaic of distant capitals.
That’s what COVID-19 worked.
The high hope that the crisis will encourage a new tighter bloc to face a common challenge has given rise to the reality of division: the pandemic has pitted the nation against the member nation and many capitals against the EU itself, as symbolized by the disjointed, virtual meetings. which leaders are holding now.
Leaders are fighting for everything from antivirus passports to pushing tourism into conditions to receive pandemic relief. Perhaps worse, some are attacking the structures built by the EU to deal with the pandemic. Last month, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz criticized the way in which buying vaccines from the bloc had become a “bazaar”, claiming that poorer countries broke out while the rich prospered.
“Internal political cohesion and respect for European values continue to be challenged in various parts of the Union,” the European Policy Center said in a study a year after the pandemic took over China and engulfed Europe.
In some places, there have been demands for political accountability.
In the Czech Republic on Wednesday, Prime Minister Andrej Babis fired his health minister, the third to be fired during the pandemic in one of Europe’s worst-hit countries. Last week, the Slovak government resigned over a secret deal to buy Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, and in Italy, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte was forced to resign over managing the economic consequences of the pandemic.
But overall, political upheavals across the EU have been turned off, with half a million people dying from the pandemic. At EU level, there have been no serious demands for the dismissal of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the bloc’s chief executive, despite acknowledging that serious mistakes have been made.
It is clear that the EU has not risen so far – and it is not clear if it can. The European Policy Center noted that “there is no immediate goal in the face of the health crisis, let alone the inevitable structural economic challenges.”
Of course, the EU and its countries have been the victims of uncontrolled events, as have other nations around the world. Good arguments can be made that some of the block’s problems are due to delayed deliveries from the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. But part of the crisis was clearly self-inflicted.
The typical complaint is that there is no single EU health structure to fight the pandemic and that health is still a national issue. But for years, the bloc has had a common drug regulator, the European Medicines Agency. And since last summer, the EU has decided to pool vaccine purchases and spread them fairly among the 27 nations, large and small, richer and poorer.
But while some non-EU countries have accelerated with emergency use permits, the EMA has moved slower, at least in part, as it has followed a process that was largely similar to the standard licensing procedure that would be granted to any new vaccine.. The agency’s first green vaccine came three weeks after one was in the UK – the first country to authorize a rigorously tested COVID-19 shot.
The block never caught up. On Friday, the UK, for example, gave 46.85% of its citizens at least one dose, compared to 14.18% in the EU.
The EU has also made the mistake of overly equating the provision of vaccines with getting blows to the arms – and underestimating the difficulties involved in mass production and distribution of such a delicate product. While EU negotiators focused on liability clauses in a contract, other nations were thinking about logistics and pushing speed and volume.
And while nations like the United States were closing their borders to vaccine exports, the EU took high ground and exports continued to flow – as almost as many doses left the bloc for third countries in the first quarter of the year, how many have been delivered to the outright EU Member States.
In addition to the mistakes related to the launch of vaccines, the EU will slow down the money from its € 750 billion ($ 890 billion) rescue package, which will split the debt and provide subsidies to poor members in an unprecedented way. But quarrels among leaders over clauses and complicated rules made everything not a quick process. What is worse, the German constitutional court could still torpedo or further delay the whole initiative.
The nature of the crisis may be different from the past, but familiar obstacles have arisen: onerous bureaucracy, unnecessary delays, as legal and technical disputes have overshadowed the overall picture and quarrelsome politicians who put self-interest before the common good.
Last week was an example. The EMA reiterated its advice for all member nations to stay together – this time to continue to use AstraZeneca jabs for all adults, despite a possible link to extremely rare cases of blood clotting.
Instead, a few hours after the announcement, Belgium was against this recommendation, banning AstraZeneca for citizens over 55, and others have issued or maintained similar restrictions.
“If government leaders do not trust science, confidence in vaccination has disappeared. If we do not rely on (EMA), ANY common EU approach is doomed, ”said Guy Verhofstadt, the EU’s main parliamentarian, normally the strongest of EU supporters.
It is noteworthy that EU nations insisted on delaying vaccination attempts in December, in particular because they wanted to wait for the EMA’s decision. But many have repeatedly ignored the EMA’s advice in the coming months, setting more restrictions on vaccine use than the agency has called for.
This extreme hesitation of many countries – in addition to the advice often – has become a hallmark of a wrong vaccination launch. He exacerbated the offer and the trust issues the block faced.
With only half of the doses the EU contracted for the first quarter – 105 million instead of 195 million – the video summit last month saw EU nations fighting for photos and a distribution system that some considered unfair. .
There are now expectations that the EU can return. 360 million photos are expected this quarter – which will keep the promise of vaccinating 70% of adults by the end of the summer in the 450 million block.
In France, President Emmanuel Macron gave a glimmer of hope to millions when he said that a return to an appearance of normal life could probably come in mid-May, when people could “claim our art of living embodied by restaurants and cafes. we love so much. “
Until then, EU leaders may even get involved in person at overnight summits.