EU video summit: eternal dispute to square the circle

At the EU virtual summit, people argued for hours about how quickly as many people as possible could get more corona vaccines and how they should be distributed.

For more than five hours, only the heads of state and government discussed the issue that still dominates Europe: the corona vaccination campaign is only slowly gaining speed. The situation remains dire, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said after the video summit. But: “Finally, vaccines are constantly progressing.”

Jakob mayr
ARD studio Brussels

According to von der Leyens, the EU should receive three times more doses of vaccine in the next quarter than since the beginning of the year. So far, manufacturers have delivered about 88 million cans, and by the end of the month it should be 100 million. According to von der Leyen’s account, drug companies have promised 360 million doses from April to June.

That is why the head of the Commission is keeping her promise: “If we look at the commitments for the second quarter as a whole, that means we are on track to achieve our target of 70 per cent of adult EU citizens in the Summer wants to get vaccinated. ”

Vaccine distribution as a circle square

However, Austria and five other countries feel at a disadvantage when it comes to distributing vaccines within the EU. Because not all governments had taken the amounts to which they were entitled according to the population of all manufacturers. Other EU states were able to buy the remaining cans, which meant they got comparatively more.

An anticipated delivery of ten million cans from Biontech / Pfizer could help. However, the EU does not want to shake up the basic distribution mechanism. The 27 EU ambassadors should now clarify the details and, in the words of Chancellor Angela Merkel, they should not be envied for their task: “Of course it is a relatively complicated task as always, something like squaring the circle. But that’s exactly what politics is. ”

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz tweeted after the summit that they had worked hard to ensure that the gap within the EU in terms of vaccination coverage for the population did not widen any further.

Export controls with a sense of proportion

At the summit, the head of the EU Commission, von der Leyen, explained that despite the shortage of vaccines in the EU, significant quantities have been exported to third countries: 77 million doses since the beginning of December. From an EU perspective, this is not a problem for manufacturers such as Biontech / Pfizer and Moderna, which deliver on their delivery promises to Brussels.

The British-Swedish group AstraZeneca, however, is hugely behind, according to the EU, so far it has not even delivered a quarter of the amount promised. After the summit, Von der Leyen emphasized: “Companies must fulfill their contracts with the EU before exporting to other regions of the world. This, of course, applies to AstraZeneca.”

Therefore, the Von der Leyens Authority has proposed tightening controls on vaccine exports to other EU countries and easing export bans. But some EU governments fear such measures could put vaccine supply chains at risk. The Chancellor also advocates a sense-of-proportion approach: “When it comes to Britain, it was rightly stated that we want to take on a win-win situation, that is, act politically sensible, because sometimes it’s a bit more complicated than it seems. is the first thing you think. ”

Approaching Turkey despite criticism

The EU is unanimous in its intention to reduce tensions with Turkey, despite the fact that there has been much criticism of the Turkish request for a ban against the pro-Kurdish HDP party and Ankara’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention for the protection of violence. female. . But: “In view of the existing and sometimes profound differences of opinion, we believe that silence is not yet an answer, but that we need contacts with Turkey at all levels.”

Specifically, the EU heads of state and government are offering Ankara negotiations on an expansion of the customs union and talks to facilitate travel, provided the Turkish government continues its efforts to reduce escalation in the eastern Mediterranean. There, Turkey had carried out unauthorized gas exploration in areas claimed by Greece and Cyprus.

Merkel saw the fact that the president of the United States, Joe Biden, was present at the end of the video summit as an important gesture that meant that the EU and the United States were once again in closer talks. According to the Chancellor, there is much in common with the United States, but, for example, there is no complete agreement on China’s policy.