Irish Examiner view: More needs to be done with urgency about vaccine contracts

Announcement by the European Commission that it had reached an agreement with BioNTech-Pfizer for the supply of four million extra doses of vaccines is all the more welcome

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen offered a robust defence of the EU's policy of negotiating Covid-19 vaccine contracts as a single bloc. (Johanna Geron, Pool Photo via AP)

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen yesterday offered a robust defence of the EU’s policy of negotiating Covid-19 vaccine contracts as a single bloc. “How would it look like in Europe if everyone would have gone on its own? We would have a few, four to five member states that would have access to vaccines — it’s the big member states — and all the rest would have no access to vaccines.”

That is a fair point, although a better argument would be that wealthier states would be likely to outpace poorer ones if it was left to all 27 members to negotiate their own deals
with manufacturers. The case she makes fails to recognise the fact that, when it comes to a swift vaccination programme, size doesn’t necessarily matter. Consider three nations that are way ahead of the EU — the US, population 331m; the UK, 67m; and Israel, population of less than 9m.