Tuesday 26 January 2021

EU VACCINE DEBACLE PROVES BREXIT WAS RIGHT !

Thank God we left the dysfunctional European Union !!!!

Having left the EU at the end of January 2020, the United Kingdom was then free to make its own plans and arrangements for dealing with the worldwide Coronavirus epidemic. The UK government agreed contracts with several companies for the supply of millions of doses of vaccines and 2 of those vaccines are now being injected into the arms of UK citizens at the rate of more than 2 million a week. 

But what has happened in the European Union ?

Being a group of 27 countries which are almost forbidden to act independently on matters of any importance, they're in a right old mess. The 27 had to agree on a way forward and so were slow to negotiate for supplies of the vaccines. Now, of course, they deny this and claim to have obtained a better price than other nations - such as the UK and USA - but are also at the back of the queue when it comes to supply. This they do not like.

One of the main producers of vaccines, the UK based pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, agreed a deal with the EU but has now found itself unable to supply the number of doses initially agreed due to production problems. Quite simply, it doesn't have the current capacity to satisfy demand and is having to create new facilities, which will take time. The EU doesn't like this one bit and is accusing the company of prioritising supplies to other countries, notably the UK, over supplies to its 27 member states. The EU is threatening various reprisals against the company and is also threatening to introduce curbs on exports of vaccines produced within its borders, seemingly regardless of contractual arrangements that may exist.

Among the various lessons taught to the world by  COVID-19, one is surely that a conglomeration of disparate countries relying on a central government to manage their affairs is a bad idea. When vital decisions are delayed due to a need to satisfy convoluted and time consuming ratification processes it's surely time to quit. The EU itself, with its Commission, Parliament, European Council and Council of the EU, is bad enough, but when individual countries (and in some cases regions) also have to have their say, it's utterly unmanageable in a time of crisis, if not always.

Of course, those who sit at the top of this vast edifice will never admit that there's a problem; if things go wrong, it must be the other party that's at fault, in this case AstraZeneca, the UK, perhaps the Boogeyman, for all I know. The knee jerk reaction is to cry "FOUL !", threaten legal action and assorted penalties for the perceived wrongdoers, and of course, use it as an excuse for demanding "MORE EUROPE, NOT LESS !".

If the UK was still a member of this dreadful organisation we would have been unable to take our own path in tackling COVID-19; we would not already have vaccinated well over 6 million people and be on course to vaccinate all of our most vulnerable citizens by mid-February. In fact we would barely have started vaccinating anyone.

If ever there was a clear proof that leaving the European Union was the right thing, indeed the only sensible thing, to do, it's this current debacle. How long will it be before other countries, hard hit by the virus and now struggling to cope under the dead hand of the EU's all-encompassing central bureaucracy, come to the same conclusion ? 

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