Telegraph: EU Blocks Vaccines From UK

A scorned European Union after Brexit is blocking vaccines from the U.K. and "peevishly" smearing them over "sour grapes," according to Daniel Hannan, a conservative former member of the European Parliament.

Remainers were right: Brexit has indeed led to an outbreak of populism, protectionism, and chauvinism," Hannan wrote Sunday in The Telegraph. "But not on the side of the Channel they expected. The EU's behaviour over the past 72 hours has been so demented, so self-wounding, that it is hard to know where criticism should begin."

Hannan chronicled a dispute between Brussels and British-Swedish vaccine-maker AstraZeneca, which the EU is using to get back at Britain, he wrote.

"In pursuit of its quarrel, Brussels announced plans to block the export of vaccines from a
completely unrelated company, the American corporation Pfizer, to Britain – vaccines
which no one disputed that the U.K. had purchased, and on which the EU did not pretend
to have any legal claim," he wrote.

"In other words, Brussels was threatening to halt the sale of life-saving drugs to a
neighbouring country, not in response to any provocation, but simply because it was
cross that that country was further advanced in its vaccination programme."

Hannan noted the strike was focused on the U.K. and not neighboring countries, exposing the vendetta, and leading the EU to smear the efficacy of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

"Annoyed at Britain's success, European leaders started casting doubt on the efficacy of the AstraZeneca product," Hannan wrote. "Engaging in the kind of nuttiness which gets people banned from social media, Emmanuel Macron claimed that the vaccine 'didn't work.' In other words, the EU is breaking every norm of civilized behaviour and threatening expropriation over a vaccine which, from sheer sour grapes, its leaders claim is ineffective."

It all comes back to Brexit, according Hannan.

"Consider the assertions made by the two sides in the 2016 referendum," he wrote. "Eurosceptics argued that the EU was slow, introverted, bureaucratic, inefficient, ready to make up the rules as it went along, a bully and a bad neighbour. Europhiles saw it as principled, internationalist, effective, generous, rules-based and committed to global trade.

"If we treat those two views as verifiable claims, which has just been falsified?"

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson should be hailed for his foresight, Hannan added.

"When Remainers, including Labour and Lib Dem MPs and every expert that The Guardian could wheel out, argued last year that Britain's refusal to join in the EU's procurement scheme would cause needless deaths here, they undoubtedly believed it," he wrote. "But it is Boris Johnson's conviction that Brexit would mean a more agile Britain that turned out to be right.

"More agile – and, I hope, more generous."

Ultimately, Britain will wind up with a vaccine surplus it can use to help its allies, Hannan concluded.

"It is a pity that, instead of quietly asking Britain to sell it some spare doses, the EU behaved so peevishly," he wrote. "But the UK should hold itself to a higher standard. Because of our successful procurement programme, we will end up with a vaccine surplus this year. We should use that surplus to benefit less well-stocked nations – our friends in the Commonwealth, naturally, but others, too.

"We should, in short, be the positive global force that the EU is failing to be."

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