Jibber Jabber and Jab-a-grabber

 Jibber Jabber: To talk in a rapid and excited way that is difficult to understand.

Oxford Dictionaries

A Northern Ireland no-no

Last Friday I held my head in my hands.  I had just heard that the European Commission was threatening to suspend the Northern Ireland Protocol of the Brexit agreement and impose a hard border across the island of Ireland. For anybody who spent any time in Northern Ireland as I did in the 1980s, and who believes in the peace-bringing 1998 Good Friday Agreement (GFA), such an act was not simply stupid, it was downright dangerous.  Thankfully, the Commission was forced to back down even though a lot of damage was done to the fragile politics of the ‘North’. Since the June 2016 Brexit referendum the Commission had been insisting there could be no border on the island of Ireland precisely to preserve the GFA and yet within weeks from the end of the Brexit transition period here they were threatening just such a move. 

Sadly, it gave the distinct impression that for the Commission what really matters is not peace on the island of Ireland but the weakening the integrity of the United Kingdom. How on Earth could Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen and her team even ever have arrived at the point of making such a decision?  The answer is a sorry tale of bungling, arrogance, panic, jibber jabber and jab-a-grabber.

A tale of two responses

On January 30^th, 2020 a meeting took place at the Nuffield Department of Medicine of the Oxford University Life Sciences team led by Sarah Gilbert, Adrian Hill, Andrew Pollard, Teresa Lambe, Sandy Douglas and Catherine Green. At that meeting it was suggested that an adaptation of technologies developed to treat Ebola and Mers could lead to a vaccine for COVID 19. After some toing and froing with potential US developers, and with the British Government to the fore, in late March 2020 the Anglo-Swedish company AstraZeneca agreed to a partnership with the Oxford team and to provide the British with written undertakings of a guaranteed supply and only at cost. This was something the Oxford scientists had insisted upon.  On March 30^th, Oxford University and AstraZeneca signed a partnership deal and on April 14^th both signed a deal to provide the British Government with 100 million doses. In May 2020, businesswomen Kate Bingham was appointed by the British Government to ensure the effective use of British taxpayer’s money to develop an efficient supply chain under a task force that she led to effect and which also supported the development in the UK of two other possible vaccines.

Contrast Britain’s performance with that of the Commission.  In spring 2020, the French, German, Italian and Dutch governments became increasingly concerned at the Commission’s seeming inability to respond to the crisis and created their own Intra-Vaccine Alliance. Keen to work with the Commission the four governments ensure Brussels was closely involved in negotiations for what Italian adviser, Professor Walter Ricciardi, called “the common good”. As Ricciardi states, “We opened the door for the Commission to take over but even then it took time, even when we tried to speed up the process….There were some countries fully aware of the importance of the vaccine, but there were others that were reluctant to put money into this without guarantees of the result. That took time and the best possible energy of the Commission. They did recruit the best possible officers to do that, but it was a long process”. 

On June 13^th, the Alliance signed a contract with AstraZeneca for some 300 million doses.  However, the Commission intervened to prevent the deal from being formalised and insisted it was responsible for ordering vaccines for the whole of the EU. Unfortunately, this led to three months of delay and the contract with AstraZeneca was only agreed in late August. Some had also wanted Britain to join the Commission’s EU-wide plan, but unlike EU member-states Britain would have been excluded from the governance of a vaccine invented in Oxford and produced mainly in the UK at sites in Oxford, Keele and Wrexham.

The situation then went from bad to worse.  The decision that regulatory authorisation would be conducted by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and not national regimes only slowed the roll-out further, as EMA protocols and process were markedly slower. One alleged reason for such tardiness was that should any vaccine prove dangerous liability would fall on the manufacturer and not the EU.  In September, a world-wide trial began of the AstraZeneca vaccine. It was paused a couple of times when some patients showed adverse reactions (and a Brazilian doctor who had been administered a placebo sadly died). However, by early November promising interim results of so-called phase three trials were complete.  

However, in early November 2020 the German company BioNTech announced it had made a breakthrough in the development of its own vaccine. In mid-December, Von der Leyen, clearly hoping for a vaccine developed in Germany/EU even tweeted, “It is Europe’s moment”, and announced that the vaccination of EU citizens would begin in late December.  She was premature. The problem was that the EU had failed to invest in the production base that would be needed to provide the requisite doses.  Indeed, whilst the UK had already committed €1.9bn, and the US €9bn, the Commission only invested €1.78bn of so called ‘risk money’ for the whole of the EU. In January 2021, the EU strategy came off the rails. Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna both announced they needed to reduce production of their respective vaccines to upgrade facilities and that they would only be able to resume full scale production in late February. The Commission still believed it would have access to some 400 million AstraZeneca doses over the coming year.  However, by January 29^th, the Oxford vaccine had still not been approved by the EMA and due to a filtering problem at a plant in Belgium AstraZeneca could only deliver some 25 million of the 100 million planned EU-made doses during the first quarter of 2021.

At this point, the Commission began issuing threats against Britain claiming that British AstraZeneca plants were part of the EU contract.  Apparently, they even looked at customs records to see if AstraZeneca had shipped doses produced in the EU to the UK, but there was no such evidence. The British response was understandably blunt: given the contract Britain had with AstraZeneca any vaccine produced in Britain would first be administered to the British people.  The Commission responded by suggesting EU Member States could block the exports of vaccines to Britain, which is what finally led to the suggestion that the Northern Ireland Protocol might be suspended.  Thankfully, cooler heads in certain national capitals prevailed and forced the Commission to withdraw what many saw as a post-Brexit nuclear option.

Political irresponsibility

Why has the Commission gone out of its way to attack Britain? The only possible conclusion is that having failed the Commission was determined to shift both responsibility and blame. However, there might another possible factor at play: German Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen.  2021 is a year of elections in Germany and the German press is incandescent with ‘VDL’s’ handling of the vaccine fiasco and has been looking for someone or something to blame.  For once, that something is not Britain, with one German newspaper even claiming to now understand Brexit.  However, the German political class has not been so magnanimous.  First, Von der Leyen was a CDU politician sent to Brussels by Chancellor Merkel in the wake of her pretty disastrous handling of the German defence ministry.  Clearly, the CDU does not want to be tarnished by Von der Leyen’s bungling of the vaccine. Second, it would appear Von der Leyen herself has political ambitions back home in Germany after her stint as Commission president.  This could explain why she appears to have tried to shift blame onto her Latvian Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis, a very decent man whom I have had the honour to meet.

Jibber jabber or jab-a-giver

In writing this I am in no way crowing over Britain’s better performance.  Thankfully, neither is Britain and rightly so.  First, Britain has also made terrible mistakes in the management of the pandemic. Second, Europe, including Britain, will only begin to return to some level of normalcy (remember that?) when the greatest number of vulnerable Europeans have been sufficiently protected to enable a critical mass of economic activity to resume.  Third, I live in the Netherlands and have no idea when I will be offered a ‘jab’. In other words, the desired outcome towards which everyone should be working demands a pan-European policy and strategy if the best application of the best vaccines to the right people in the right places over an appropriately actionable period is to be realised. 

The real problem is that throughout this sorry episode the Commission has shown itself to be too rigid and inflexible to be an effective crisis manager.  It has also revealed itself unwilling to put aside the politics of Brexit and unable to adapt to meet the particular demands of the crisis. Rather than attacking the British to mask their own catastrophic handling of the vaccine contracts, which sadly has become the new normal for much of the European policy establishment, every opportunity should have been seized by all concerned to work together for the common good.

If the Commission is ever to become an effective crisis manager two things need to happen. First, the European Commission has to have the political self-confidence to properly assess and respond to its own failings.  Contrary to what some in Britain believe the Commission is not brim full of swivel-eyed ideologues, but it does suffer from its own form of Papal Infallibility. Institutions that are incapable of identifying and learning lessons cannot adapt and in time fail. Second, the Commission must stop treating Britain like some distant breakaway province that has dared to challenge its authority and more like the neighbouring state and partner that according to World Population Review in 2021 has the world’s fifth largest economy and fifth biggest defence budget. Sadly, this will not be the only crisis Europeans will likely face and will need to face together.

It is time to end the jibber jabber and when possible Britain should be a jab-a-giver but for everyone’s sake the Commission (and others in the EU) should end threats of a jab-a-grabber and all that would entail for the wider EU-UK relationship.

 Julian Lindley-French