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BBrussels today released new rules that will allow it to impose a vaccine export ban in countries, like Britain, that have far exceeded their vaccination rates. James crisp write.
The European Commission said the revised “vaccine transparency mechanism” would also target countries that made coronavirus vaccines but did not export them to the bloc.
Brussels is furious with AstraZeneca after the company announced a series of supply shortages, and companies that fail to meet contractual obligations are also subject to the new rules.
Its Trade and Health commissioner denied that the ban was a punishment for the success of vaccination in Britain, which has affected more than half of its adult population compared to just 12 percent in the EU.
But when asked which country could be most affected, Valdis Dombrovskis, the trade commissioner, gave the example of the UK.
He said the EU has exported around 10.9 million vaccines, mainly from Pfizer’s Belgian plant, to the UK, but Britain has not sent any jab shipments to the block.
Commissioners said any decision to ban exports would be based on reciprocity, whether a destination restricts exports to the EU and proportionality, whether conditions in the destination country are better or worse than those in the EU.
The commission has already threatened to use the mechanism to block the export of millions of AstraZeneca vaccines from the company’s Halix plant in Leiden, the Netherlands.
Dombrovskis did not deny that Pfizer’s exports to Britain could be blocked. He said decisions would be made “on a case-by-case basis.”
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