The fight against vaccine exports increases the decline in EU-UK relations

The UK vaccination campaign has delivered at least one shot to almost half of the country’s adults, in contrast to the hitherto faltering deployment of the EU.

Britain left the bloc on 31 January last year and began a new economic relationship earlier this year based on a last-minute trade deal that explained an independent trade relationship.

At the time, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the deal was “a resolution to the old, tired and annoying issue of Britain’s political relations with Europe that our post-war history has suffered.” He said the UK would be the “best friend and ally the EU could have”.

So far, it hasn’t worked that way.

The relationship “is very dysfunctional and the open channels to fix things are broken,” said Mujtaba Rahman, CEO of the Eurasia group, a consulting firm.

Actions by the UK and the EU have shaken confidence in a part of the divorce treaty that aimed to avoid a border on the island of Ireland after Brexit. Britain has refused to grant the EU envoy to London full diplomatic status, prompting the British ambassador in Brussels to be frozen from meetings. Meanwhile, trade between the UK and European nations has fallen sharply due to the pandemic and new barriers to trade introduced this year for the first time in almost five decades.

The pandemic has inflamed the dental pains that were expected in this new relationship. Britain authorized and deployed its vaccines faster than European nations, which had left the EU to manage acquisitions on their behalf. The UK was also able to quickly close vaccine supply contracts.

Some top European health politicians and regulators questioned whether a vaccine was developed and implemented in the UK by AstraZeneca PLC and Oxford University, was effective in the elderly. The data has confirmed that yes. Following a deficit in the supply of AstraZeneca vaccine to the EU, several European governments suspended the use of the vaccine for fear that it could cause blood clots.

Proponents of Brexit pointed to the EU’s vaccine problems as an example of why Britain was right to leave the bloc.

“Just this week we saw what happens when you have an anti-science, anti-business and anti-technology culture in Brussels married to its terrible bureaucracy in its crazy decisions about warnings about the AstraZeneca vaccine,” Dominic Cummings said. Mr. Johnson’s former chief of staff said Wednesday.

The EU introduced a mechanism in late January that allowed member states to stop exporting vaccine doses off the block. Since then, only one export batch has been stopped.

The UK government has not banned vaccine exports. But under the contracts it signed with vaccine suppliers, it has closed with top-notch agreements that have bolstered its vaccination campaign. Last week, the UK summoned a senior EU diplomat in response to allegations by European Council President Charles Michel that Britain had a “direct ban” on exports.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday that the EU could tighten its export ban to stop sending vaccines to countries that did not sell vaccines to the bloc and were advanced in vaccination campaigns. As Britain has been by far the main recipient of vaccination, with 10 million doses sold in the UK since the end of January, Ms. von der Leyen said Britain was a country from which he wanted to see reciprocity.

The EU has exported 40 million doses of vaccine since January, making the bloc the world’s leading exporter of vaccines, despite its difficulties in acquiring and administering vaccines.

Tensions over vaccines are at the back of the friction between London and Brussels over the implementation of the Brexit agreement and, in particular, the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol, a complicated agreement that allows the northern region -Irish of the United Kingdom keep an open border. with the Republic of Ireland, which is a member of the EU. The agreement stipulates that the UK must carry out customs controls on products ranging from the British mainland to Northern Ireland to ensure that they comply with EU standards.

Britain has said it would unilaterally delay the full implementation of the controls, which were scheduled to begin next month. On Monday, the EU executive body said it was taking legal action for the decision. The measure could lead to the imposition of sanctions by the bloc’s highest court and, once the post-Brexit trade agreement is fully ratified, retaliatory action will be taken against the UK.

British officials believe the EU is trying to protect its single market at the risk of undermining the peace process in Ireland. Earlier this year, the EU commission published a plan to ban the export of vaccines to Northern Ireland. The decision was never implemented, but intensified opposition among pro-UK unionists to the Brexit deal in Northern Ireland.

The Biden administration has pushed Brussels and London to step on Ireland carefully. “We continue to encourage both the European Union and the UK government to prioritize pragmatic solutions to safeguard and advance the peace won in Northern Ireland,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

Senior British government officials, such as David Frost, who negotiated the Brexit deal and now leads the EU government’s strategy, have also accused the EU of protecting ill-will towards Britain because of its way out.

The struggle for the diplomatic status of the EU ambassador in London has caused communications between top officials in Brussels and the United Kingdom to dry up, people on both sides said.

Meanwhile, with the creation of new barriers to trade this year, there has been a sharp drop in trade between the two sides, although it is unclear how much it is related to the pandemic and the storage of importers and exporters in the year. past. UK data show that exports of British goods to the EU fell 41% in January compared to the previous month and imports by 56% compared to a year earlier.

—Jason Douglas in London contributed to this article.

Write to Max Colchester at [email protected] and Laurence Norman at [email protected]