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A storm is unleashed by the fact that the European Union (EU) has not ordered more of the COVID-19 vaccines approved in advance. Stéphane Bancel, CEO of the United States (USA) pharmaceutical company Moderna, which obtained approval for its vaccine shortly after Pfizer / BioNTech, claims that the EU has relied too much on “vaccines from its own laboratories” . Did the European Commission prioritize supporting your own pharmaceutical industry over protecting human lives?
In fact, things are not that simple. Contrary to what Bancel wants us to believe, the EU has asked for very little of its own vaccine. After all, the vaccine that is being administered most widely in the West was developed by a German company, BioNTech, and therefore comes from the EU (although it was tested and partly produced in partnership with Pfizer in the US. And Fosun Pharma in China). ).
Far from having asked for very little of the “American” vaccine, the EU sat by as the US and other countries stocked up on doses of a vaccine that was created and produced in a German laboratory. The EU is not guilty of protectionism, but of institutional inflexibility. The slow launch of the vaccine in many European countries is the result of the inability of the EU to coordinate the interests of the various member states.
While some countries opposed the price of BioNTech’s mRNA vaccine, others were skeptical of its new gene-based technology foundations, and still others simply did not recognize the urgency of the situation, having assumed that the worst of the pandemic it had already passed.
To be sure, a rivalry between Europe between domestic vaccine producers may have contributed to the EU’s unwillingness to reserve more of the German vaccine last summer, as the United States and other countries did. As a small start-up from Mainz, BioNTech had little chance of being heard above the din of lobbying in the European Commission by established European pharmaceutical giants.
Whatever the reason, the serious delay in the supply of vaccines in Europe is already a fact. While the US, UK (UK), Japan and Canada jostled last July and August to secure large batches of the BioNTech vaccine, the EU initially placed their orders only with Sanofi and AstraZeneca, who subsequently admitted difficulties in clinical trials. . It was not until November, when journalists started asking specific questions, that the EU reached its first agreement for a batch of the BioNTech vaccine. This was followed in December and early January by new purchases, including from Moderna.
Due to the delay in the order, deliveries are delayed. After all, growers operate on a first come, first serve basis and need time to build new production sites. As a result, the European media is full of sad images of empty vaccination centers that have run out of supply, along with images of overloaded intensive care units. A sense of impending horror has gripped a frightened European audience. At this rate, the EU will have no chance to catch up with the US, UK, Israel and other leading vaccinators until this summer.
The EU maintains that it diversified its orders early on because it could not know which candidate vaccines would be successful. But that’s a cheap excuse, considering you haven’t ordered enough from any producer yet to be able to vaccinate your people in the event that only one candidate vaccine made it to the approval stage – a different possibility at the time.
If the EU had risked buying enough doses to cover two-thirds of its population from each of the six producers it dealt with, it would have needed to spend just € 29 billion ($ 35 billion). For comparison, that’s how much revenue the EU economy has been losing in the span of just 10 days after the COVID-19 crisis. And since not one, but two vaccines have proven highly effective, the EU would have ended up with a surplus of high-quality doses, which could have donated to some 300 million people across the developing world.
No decision maker is to blame for the vaccination debacle in Europe. But this episode should make clear that EU member states were wrong to entrust the European Commission with purchasing vaccines last summer. Article 5 of the Treaty on European Union subjects the EU to the Subsidiarity Principle, which leaves political actions in the hands of the Member States, except in cases where it can be shown that supranational action is more efficient.
When it came to securing a large supply of vaccines, this principle was deliberately ignored. There is neither a legal need nor a compelling economic justification for centralized planning in vaccine procurement. If member state governments had been able to purchase vaccines independently and in direct competition with other countries around the world, they might have had to pay a slightly higher price, but they would have placed their orders much earlier to avoid missing the boat.
And if orders had been placed earlier, vaccine producers could have invested more in expanding their production capacities. In the end, central planning and lobbying by established producers created the vaccine debacle in Europe. Europeans will now have to live with the consequences of an avoidable tragedy.
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