Europe’s Covid Bill Is Coming Due

EU leaders made unforced errors with lockdowns and vaccine debacles. Their parties may pay.

By Dominic Green. Mr. Green is deputy U.S. editor of the Spectator. Excerpts:

"in the U.K., roughly 40% of the population has received at least one Covid-19 shot. Across the water, only about 13% of the European Union’s citizens have received a jab. In France, that number is closer to 10%."

"Mr. Macron and Ms. Merkel tried to turn a healthcare crisis into an opportunity to prove the superiority of Brussels’ technocracy. While Boris Johnson’s government in the U.K. spread its bets and ordered vaccines from multiple sources as quickly as possible, their counterparts across the English Channel gambled on two French vaccines, one from the pharmacological company Sanofi, the other from the Pasteur Institute, a research nonprofit."

"Sanofi says it may have a vaccine by the end of the year at the earliest. In January the Pasteur Institute abandoned its main vaccine candidate. François Bayrou, an ally of Mr. Macron and France’s commissioner for long-term planning, blames the Americans: “It is not acceptable that our best researchers, the most brilliant of our researchers, are sucked up by the American system,” he said earlier this year.

At first, Mr. Macron and Ms. Merkel played down Britain’s success by disparaging the AstraZeneca vaccine’s efficiency. Mr. Macron claimed it was “quasi-ineffective” for those over 65, and Ms. Merkel said she wouldn’t take it as a 66-year-old—concerns belied by data from the U.K. Then the EU suspended use of the AstraZeneca shot under German pressure, due to unfounded concerns about blood clots.

Despite this, France and Germany blame their problems on Britain, which they claim withheld supplies of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, has called for impounding vaccines on EU territory. At an EU summit on Thursday, the commission endorsed limits on the EU export of vaccine materials to states with higher inoculation rates. And unlike the U.K. government, the EU is falling behind on its commitment to the United Nations program to vaccinate poorer nations.

Meanwhile, the EU’s supposedly unified response is turning into a free-for-all. Germany has secured a stash of 50 million Moderna shots. Hungary has broken ranks by approving and buying its own supply of the Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine. The prime minister of Slovakia has offered to resign after buying Russian vaccine supplies without the approval of his coalition partners."