Photographer: Alex Kraus / Bloomberg
Photographer: Alex Kraus / Bloomberg
Angela Merkel is starting to explode under pressure from the hesitant German coronavirus vaccine program.
With the chancellor under fire publicly for Covid-19’s lack of fire and its strategy of delegating responsibility to the With a wrong look at the European Union, she jumped when she was pressured to get answers from German prime ministers during a closed-door meeting in early January.
Enraged by what those involved had never seen, he threatened retaliation and made public the mistakes of officials, leaving participants silent. On other occasions, he has been about to cry in public in recent weeks.
Angela Merkel arrives at a press conference on Covid-19 in Berlin on January 21st.
Photographer: Michael Kappeler / POOL / AFP / Getty Images
“It breaks my heart when I see how many people have died in lonely old people’s homes,” he said in a recent speech.
This emotion is very unusual for the sober physique, who in his 15 years at the helm of Europe’s largest economy has faced one crisis after another without any problems. But as it prepares to hand over the chancellery after the September election, the pandemic seems to be moving away from it. An opinion poll published last week proves this. Only 11% of respondents thought Germany’s vaccine program was going well, while 61% saw significant shortcomings with the deployment.
Reconstructing the facts of this story, which is based on information from government officials who called for private conversations inside the chancellery not to be identified, shows that the country’s vaccines carry Merkel’s hand. His European approach provoked conflicts within the German government, relying on an overload The European Commission made it difficult to deploy. A government spokesman declined to comment on the internal deliberations.
The tension has led to strong participation in Brussels. The EU takes over AstraZeneca Plc and other pharmaceutical companies, and imposing export controls on a total or no response to their perceived errors.
The EU is chasing the vaccine race
Accumulated doses administered per 100 people
Source: Data collected by Bloomberg
Germany’s effort started well enough. The Merkel government supported the development of vaccines in the early stages, making a leap over other countries.
In April, Health Minister Jens Spahn, Merkel’s longtime opponent, contacted BioNTech SE and offered financial assistance. In September, the German set up received € 375 million ($ 450 million) in research funding, about three times what it had public contribution obtained at the end of 2019. In June, Germany invested 300 million euros in another German set up, CureVac NV, acquiring a stake and advocating a Trump administration approach.
But behind the scenes, a political struggle collapsed.
Spahn had long been a thorn in the side of the chancellor. The ambitious 40-year-old conservative sincerely criticized her refugee policy and was reluctantly offered a seat in her cabinet in 2018. The coronavirus crisis offered her the opportunity to improve her profile and she planned to take it.
Angela Merkel and Jens Spahn in the Bundestag on 13 January.
Photographer: John MacDougall / AFP / Getty Images
During the first weeks of the pandemic, Spahn gave press conferences almost daily, until the chancellery told him to get out of the spotlight. In mid-March, Merkel put the crisis under her wing, and the relatively soft closure of Germany contained the spread. The impression was that Merkel had saved the day again.
Ruined by this success, it looked to the German presidency of the EU during the second half of 2020. There were big problems to deal with, such as the difficult Brexit negotiations and the recovery fund.
But Spahn remained active. In June, he forged a vaccine alliance with France, Italy and the Netherlands. The goal was to get as many doses as possible, and on June 13, the group signed a previous contract with AstraZeneca for 400 million shots. What could have been good news caused alarms in Berlin and Brussels.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called on the chancellery to stop Spahn’s alliance. Merkel’s former defense minister made it clear to the chancellor that Spahn’s effort could eclipse the German presidency of the EU.
As a committed multilateralist, she did not want to be remembered for saving Germans at the expense of the rest of the EU. Shortly afterwards, Spahn effectively apologized for the initiative.
“We think it makes sense if the commission takes the lead in this process,” Spahn and his counterparts said in the letter, which was leaked to the media in January as part of a pressure campaign on Merkel.
Visitors expect to receive doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine at a vaccination site in Wurzburg, Germany.
Photographer: Alex Kraus / Bloomberg
Meanwhile, the US was throwing money as part of Operation Warp Speed. In May, the Trump administration committed so much $ 1.2 billion in funding for the AstraZeneca vaccine project. In July, the United States agreed to pay $ 1.95 billion for 100 million doses of the BioNTech vaccine, with the option to purchase an additional $ 500 million.
Almost simultaneously with the agreement with the United States, the United Kingdom also agreed to buy 30 million doses from BioNTech and its partner. Pfizer Inc.
Read more: EU vaccine Roll out Risks Another existential crisis
Little happened in Brussels. In July, the Commission rejected an offer from BioNTech for 500 million doses amid price and cold storage concerns for the dams.
By the end of the summer, the chancellery was increasingly alarmed by slow progress, and Merkel asked von der Leyen to speed things up. In late August, the Commission signed an agreement with AstraZeneca.
It was not until November 20 that an EU agreement with BioNTech was finalized, 11 days after the company announced that its vaccine candidate was more than 90% effective in clinical trials.
Even that was a struggle. Germany had to guarantee that it would take time Until 100 million doses and 192 million euros added to the amount of EU money for virus treatments. But as more studies highlighted the benefits of the shot, other member states lined up and Germany’s allocation was halved.
Meanwhile, a bilateral agreement that Spahn signed with BioNTech on September 8 for 30 million doses exclusively for Germany was embroiled in bureaucracy.
At the head of the group
German Conservatives are ahead at the polls, but the gap is narrowing
Source: Dimap Infratest
“The process in Europe certainly did not proceed as quickly and directly as with other countries,” said Ugur Sahin, CEO of BioNTech. Spiegel magazine, blaming the cumbersome bureaucracy of the EU and a careless approach. “Apparently, there was an attitude of, ‘We’ll have enough, it won’t be so bad, we have everything under control.’
While the EU recruitment process was scribbling, Merkel was busy posing as an advocate for vaccine justice. In June, he announced that Germany would donate 600 million euros to the Gavi Alliance, plus 100 million euros for developing countries.
The global approach makes sense from a scientific point of view, and by the way, there is still a long way to go that could allow Germany (even better than many other countries) to recover.
It was not until November 20 that an EU agreement with BioNTech was finalized.
Photographer: Alex Kraus / Bloomberg
But politically, he was causing his allies to twist, especially as they awaited the September election. The leader of the Bavarian state, Markus Soeder – a leader aspiring to succeed her as chancellor – she has supported Merkel’s European course, however pointed out: “It’s not bad to worry about your own country either.”
To ease tensions, Merkel will hold a German summit on vaccines on Monday, but the pressure remains palpable. When asked recently if she would be willing to apologize for the wrong steps, she turned away and responded with a lecture on the complex production process, including the role of saline.
“Of course, we could have asked for more sooner,” Spahn said Friday, refusing to publicly point with Merkel or anyone else. “Our opponent is the virus, not the pharmaceutical industry and not each other.”
– With the assistance of Raymond Colitt and Hayley Warren