Chris

That article reads like a conclusion in search of an argument. "not the story that you think it is" is the line handed to the journalist by his news desk. Everything else is arranged so as to support that line. The result is a number of pretty glaring inconsistencies and assertions that really ought to have been questioned, but haven't been.

The first is Parsons' failure to account for the differences in the nature and the background to the contacts signed by the UK and the EU with AZ. He attributes far too much weight to the dating of the final purchase contracts and their similar wording, but having observed that AZ had a prior relationship, and an initial contract with the UK government from months prior, he fails to explore the logical outcome of that. The UK government substantially funded Oxford's work and introduced Oxford to AZ in the first place, precisely in order to secure domestic production and guaranteed supply. This was publicly known at the time. How could the EU negotiators be ignorant of that? How could they think that anything in their contract with AZ would supersede anything previously arranged with the UK? That smacks of serious ineptitude.

Second, his German source lets slip that there are AZ vaccines sitting in fridges for 12 weeks against the second dose requirement. Yet the UK has consistently been portrayed as a lone wolf in pursuing the 12 week strategy. When did that change in Germany? It's worth a sidebar at least, but Parsons doesn't seem interested.

Third, the EU would by now have vaccinated around 25%, rather than its dismal 11%, had it had all the vaccine it was expecting. Yet this is still comfortably behind the US and far behind the UK, which has achieved almost double that by now. So where is the remaining problem in vaccine planning in the EU? Is it in national plans to distribute the vaccine, or is it in the EU's procurement strategy?

Fourth, and finally from me for now, though I'm sure there are others: does the EU really think this is a contractual issue with a commercial enterprise, or not? That is its assertion, and that's the line Parsons meekly adopts. But that is inconsistent with the EU's continual reference to the number of vaccines it claims to have exported and its constant complaining about lack of reciprocity. If this is a contractual issue between the EU and a commercial enterprise, then the number of vaccines made and exported by a different commercial enterprise is irrelevant. They are completely unconnected. Pfizer is fulfilling a contract with its customer. The EU neither owns Pfizer's product, nor is the EU responsible for exporting it. It has created no relationship with the recipient of the Pfizer vaccine, much less one that creates an obligation of reciprocity. All of the talk about the EU 'exporting' and complaining about lack of reciprocity is not an EU-AZ issue, it is an EU-UK issue. And that's the elephant in the room Parsons has ignored above all. The EU's attitude to all of this is quite blatantly being driven by lingering Brexit resentment and a UK triumph as a direct point of comparison with an EU failure.

Having read Adam Parsons' piece for Sky News, I'm forced to conclude that Europe's vaccine blame game is exactly the story I thought it was, and it is the ineptitude of the European Commission that is toying with people's lives, not the actions of a company that is making and distributing the vaccine, according to best effort, as agreed with its customers.