The UK will tell the EU next week that it must consider the millions of pounds British taxpayers spent on the creation of the Oxford University/AstraZeneca jab as the two sides look to resolve an ongoing row over vaccine exports.
The UK and EU are set to resume talks from tomorrow over Brussels' threats to block the export of AstraZeneca vaccines manufactured at a Halix plant in the Netherlands. (Getty Images)
The UK will tell the EU next week that it must consider the millions of pounds British taxpayers spent on the creation of the Oxford University/AstraZeneca jab as the two sides look to resolve an ongoing row over vaccine exports.
The UK and EU are set to resume talks from tomorrow over Brussels’ threats to block the export of AstraZeneca vaccines manufactured at a Halix plant in the Netherlands.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has publicly threatened to block shipments of vaccines from the plant destined for the UK, unless the company gives more units of the jab to EU countries.
AstraZeneca has fallen behind on its scheduled delivery of vaccines to the EU, with the pharma giant blaming production and supply chain issues for the delays.
The UK government made orders of the vaccine, created in Britain, earlier and on a larger scale than the EU, meaning that units manufactured in the bloc are being sent to the UK.
Von der Leyen has called for “reciprocity”, after 21m vaccine units have been sent from EU plants to the UK with none coming the other way.
The Sunday Telegraph reports that British officials will tell the EU in negotiations that it was £84m of UK government funding that helped create the jab and that without this cash no vaccine would exist.
The UK will push for overall investment into vaccines to be counted into the EU’s calculations during negotiations next week, with Boris Johnson’s government spending more than £6bn to develop and procure vaccines.
Culture secretary Oliver Dowden told Sky News today: “Our position is very clear, that the EU should not be engaging in blocking exports and that they should honour the pledge that Ursula Von De Leyen gave to Prime Minister Boris Johnson a short while ago, whereby they agreed that any contracts should be honoured, so that is to say that if vaccines have been provided in honouring of the contracts, that should be honoured by the EU and we expect them to abide by that.”
The European Union, which exploited the border between British Northern Ireland and the EU’s Republic of Ireland as an all-important bargaining chip in the Brexit talks, ditched the deal it demanded for the province and announced a hard border in an attempt to remedy its vaccine failures, before backing off.
Northern Ireland, despite being an integral part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as the name would suggest, has been virtually economically annexed by the EU, with even the British military required to fill in forms and alert NATO before moving assets there from the British mainland, because Brussels insisted this was the only way to avoid a “hard border” with the Republic of Ireland.
Many Brexit supporters suggested that the EU, which claimed its demands that Northern Ireland obey EU rules and be subjected to an EU-monitored trade border with the rest of the United Kingdom were made in the interests of Irish peace, never really cared about the island, and merely found it convenient leverage against the British government.
For some, those accusations were proven true when Brussels announced that it would itself be introducing a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland so it could keep hold of UK-bound vaccines, which it is trying to seize to make up for its own failure to secure an adequate number of jabs for EU citizens.
Reports indicate Brussels took this action, which the First Minister of Northern Ireland, Arlene Foster, described as an “incredible act of hostility”, without even bothering to consult EU Ireland, with Irish government ministers scrambling to assure people they were trying to address the situation on social media before the bloc ultimately abandoned its plans in the face of a growing public relations disaster.
“The European Union has once again shown it is prepared to use Northern Ireland when it suits their interests but in the most despicable manner — over the provision of a vaccine which is designed to save lives,” First Minister Foster, who supports Brexit and Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom, but opposed the terms of Boris Johnson’s deal with the EU, had said.
“At the first opportunity the EU has placed a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland over the supply chain of the coronavirus vaccine,” she added.
The Republic of Ireland’s political leaders, meanwhile, had expressed “shock” and “concern” at the EU’s announcement of a hard border to block vaccine movements, and relief when the Brussels backed down.
Britain’s decision not to join in with the EU on vaccine procurement early on in the pandemic was widely condemned by British anti-Brexiteers and supposed health experts, many of whom essentially accused the Boris Johnson administration of making a call which would kill people in the name of narrow nationalism.
It ultimately proved to be the correct call, however, with the United Kingdom managing to approve vaccines, place orders, and begin mass inoculation programmes long before the EU.
Brussels, meanwhile, finds itself in a growing spat with AstraZeneca over the jab it devised with Oxford University, as EU-based plants face issues with production at scale. The bloc has been demanding UK-made vaccines intended for UK citizens be diverted to make up the shortfall, and is looking to block the export of UK-purchased Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines made in the EU to the wider UK if it does not get its way, even if the Northern Ireland border remains open..
Many EU governments have begun ordering vaccines at the national level in response to the fiasco, including from Russia, as critics accuse Brussels of “acting like the drunk guy in McDonald’s at 2:30 a.m. getting angry because everyone who placed their order before him got served before him.”
The British military has to fill in forms and alert NATO when moving forces from one part of the United Kingdom to another under the Northern Ireland protocol of Boris Johnson’s deals with the European Union, it has been revealed.
Brussels has postponed the inaugural meeting between Britain’s mission to the bloc and European Union officials, in apparent retaliation for the UK refusing to give the EU’s envoys the diplomatic status afforded to those representing sovereign states.
The EU ordered a raid of a vaccine plant in Belgium because it did not believe AstraZeneca’s explanation for the delay in vaccine production, as the bloc continues to look for others to blame for its failures in rolling out a vaccination programme.
Major German newspaper Die Zeit has labelled the European Union’s failure to approve vaccines and secure their delivery as “the best advertisement for Brexit”.
Brexit leader Nigel Farage has criticised the “nasty, vindictive” EU for threatening to block the export of vaccines purchased by Britain because Brussels is falling behind in its own vaccine programme.
Brexit Britain has enjoyed a slew of good news stories in manufacturing, on top of Nissan’s high-profile commitment to expanding operations in the country.
Nissan’s chief operating officer has said that Brexit “is a positive” for the carmaker, and that it will be moving battery production from Japan to Britain.
Brexit Britain is reportedly refusing to grant the European Union the rank of a sovereign state, by denying its ambassador to the UK full diplomatic rights and privileges.
A Conservative MP has branded as “pathetic” a Dutch customs agent confiscating ham sandwiches from a lorry driver who had just arrived from the UK, with the officer telling the driver: “Welcome to Brexit.”
The UK’s managing director of Nissan, Andrew Humberstone, has said that he is “satisfied” with the UK-EU trade deal agreed last month, and doubled down on the Japanese company’s commitment to building cars in Britain, even despite the lockdown.
Leading European Union parliamentarian Guy Verhofstadt says Britons backed Brexit to demonstrate their right to be stupid, and that the country’s youth will take it back into the EU.
With no reliable majority for May’s administration in the House of Commons, and both the Commons and the Lords dominated by politicians who never wanted to leave the EU in the first place, the country was quite literally ungovernable…
Britain left the European Union in name in January 2020, but remained subject to the EU, its judges, and its migration regime through a so-called “transition” period. It left in a real sense on at 11 pm on December 31st — according to supporters of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s exit deal, at least. But how did the country get here?
