Frictions between the United Kingdom and the European Union on …

Furniture of coronavirus vaccines has become the new battle front between the European Union and the UK after the completion of Brexit. The focus of the discussion goes through AstraZeneca, the laboratory that produces the vaccine manufactured at the University of Oxford. The European bloc has accused the company of diverting doses to London which are expected to reach the continent. Total non-compliance would reach up to 400 million doses.

EU officials say the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company only delivered a quarter of the doses it had promised for the first quarter of 2021. In addition, they disclosed parts of the contract that binds the two factories that the UK company owns “Contribute to the Effort” to deliver the drug. Pascal Soriot, CEO of AstraZeneca, said the contracts did not provide for “compromises” on the supply of vaccines.

The EU activated this Saturday a mechanism to control of exports of covid-19 vaccines manufactured by pharmaceutical companies on European territory in order to increase transparency and ensure delivery of committed doses, and this does not apply to a long list of countries and Northern Ireland. The measure will be in effect until March 31 and will only affect vaccines from laboratories with which the European Commission has signed, on behalf of the 27, advance purchase agreements.

The announcement of this mechanism provoked a cascade of reactions on Friday in the United Kingdom, where there were fears the imposition of controls in Northern Ireland. The tension has reached such a level that the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and the President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, had a telephone conversation on Friday evening during which agreed on the “principle” that there are no restrictions on the export of vaccines when pharmaceutical companies fulfill their contractual responsibilities.

The Commission clarified that the Northern Ireland Protocol, signed between the EU and the UK to remove the Irish island’s physical borders, “is unaffected” by the EU’s requirement prior authorization for pharmaceutical companies to export vaccines to third countries.

Meanwhile, the vaccination campaign is advancing on British soil, one of Johnson’s letters demanding a divorce from Europe. At least 7.5 million Britons have already received at least the first dose. The figure contrasts with that of other countries. Germany vaccinated 1.8 million, and France barely reached 1.2 million.

The UK was the first Western country to approve and administer the Pfizer / BioNtech vaccine and subsequently approved the AstraZeneca and Moderna vaccines, while in the EU this process slows down as authorization depends on the body of regulations, the European Medicines Agency.

Despite this, Nick Hopkinson, a member of the UK’s European Movement, an organization that promotes ties to the continent, denied that the vaccination campaign is a strong case for Brexit.

“If being a newly independent sovereign state positively influenced our performance in the face of the pandemic, then this factor should also be responsible for the highest covid-19 death rate in the world,” he said. at the Telam agency.

“Vaccine nationalism may work well with us, but the UK has been shown to be able to speed up the approval of Pfizer vaccine under EU rules and the vaccines have been developed by multinational staff,” he added in favor of integration.

In December, an editorial by The observer noted that “Pfizer / BioNtech vaccines were developed in Germany by children of Turkish immigrants, then tested in the United States, Brazil, Argentina and South Africa. They are now made in Belgium, in an intriguing chain of international participation that ends with Britain stepping in, at the last minute, to garner praise for being the first to approve the vaccine for use. “