They did recruit the best possible officers to do that, but it was a long process”. That took time and the best possible energy of the Commission. 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. 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”.
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. 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.Ĭontrast Britain’s performance with that of the Commission. On March 30th, Oxford University and AstraZeneca signed a partnership deal and on April 14th both signed a deal to provide the British Government with 100 million doses. This was something the Oxford scientists had insisted upon. 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. 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. On January 30th, 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. 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. 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. 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. Thankfully, the Commission was forced to back down even though a lot of damage was done to the fragile politics of the ‘North’.
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. 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. Jibber Jabber: To talk in a rapid and excited way that is difficult to understand.