Once upon a time there was the vaccination strategy of the European Union, designed to ‘serve’ all member states equally with anti-covid vials. She’s not dead yet, but she’s sick. The latest blow to the heart comes from Johnson & Johnson. This American vaccine had become the hope of the European Commission still struggling with the disappointments of Astrazeneca. In Brussels and in the capitals of the Union, EMA’s okay is expected with trepidation, which should arrive the day after tomorrow. But in the meantime, a cold shower arrives today, yet another for the EU. Johnson & Johnson anticipates that it will not be able to supply the 55 million doses planned for next quarter due to “supply problems”, it will recover later in the year.
The European effort is struggling, even where Brussels attempts to direct the bar towards Washington. Even the OECD underlines that “the EU has not been effective on vaccines”. According to the Russians responsible for the Sputnik vaccine, production agreements have been signed with several companies in important Member States, such as Italy, France, Germany and Spain. This puts the governments themselves in difficulty in their alignment with the European strategic choice to focus on the transatlantic axis also for vaccines, a strategic choice on which Mario Draghi founded his government. In Rome, as in Berlin, Paris and Madrid, the policy is not to authorize any product without the approval of the EMA. But the EMA is the center of the pressures and of the confrontation.
In an interview with Russian TV ‘Rossiya 24’, the head of the Russian fund that produces Sputnik, Kirill Dmitriev, announces that he has concluded agreements with production companies in France, Germany and Spain, as well as with Italy (as we wrote yesterday). Dmitriev does not offer further details. France denies it. But the Italian part of the story is confirmed. One of the agreements in our country is with the Swiss biopharmaceutical company Adienne Pharma & Biotech chaired by the Italian Antonio Francesco Di Naro. From July, the Sputnik will be produced in the Caponago production plant, in the province of Monza. Ema permitting.
But there is another Russian-Italian agreement. “Two other well-known companies in the field are in the final phase of negotiations with the Russian Fund for Direct Investments (RDIF)”, announces the president of Banca Intesa Russia, Antonio Fallico. “This will give further impetus to the production of Sputnik in Italy. I believe that the overall analytical documentation, reparametrated on European standards, will be delivered to the EMA by the end of the month and therefore registration will be able to arrive in May ”.
“Irrelevant”, cut short by the European Commission commenting on the Italian-Russian industrial agreements. The question “does not change our strategy”, but “shows that Moscow is unable to produce vaccines for its population and even less for Europe”. From the moment in which the production of Sputnik will start to when the vaccine will be available for the Italian population, the same sources say, months will pass and it will probably arrive at the end of the year, when the EU will have reached a production capacity of doses between 2 and 3 billion a year: “No talks are underway to integrate Sputnik into the European strategy”. In the evening, the Minister for Economic Development Giancarlo Giorgetti hears on the phone the European Commissioner Thierry Breton, head of the European task force on anti-covid vaccines. The first confirms that Italian companies are available to produce only vaccines authorized by the EMA. The second promises a strong growth in the pace of the vaccination campaign in the coming months.
Yesterday, the EMA went so far as to strongly advise Member States against adopting an emergency authorization for Russian serum: “Authorizing it is now a Russian roulette”. On the other hand, today the Kremlin is demanding a “public apology” from the European Medicines Agency: Sputnik is 91 percent effective against covid, according to the authoritative scientific journal Lancet, and has been authorized by 46 countries around the world. The Russian developers of Sputnik openly doubt the neutrality of the EMA. “The accusations against us are deplorable and inappropriate,” said Kremlin spokesman Dimtry Peskov.
Meanwhile, in Brussels they feel the blow from Johnson & Johnson, but no one in the EU Commission takes part in the attack of the American company, contrary to what happened with the Anglo-Swedish Astrazeneca. Breton, who just yesterday spoke with his counterpart in the US, the head of the ‘covid task force’ at the White House Jeffrey Zients, is sympathetic to Johnson & Johnson, “I know they have had some difficulties in the US”, “when it starts to producing the road is full of holes ”, but“ if a company has a production problem it doesn’t mean that the whole plan is in danger ”. Breton confirms that the EMA will authorize this serum “by the day or by the hour” and announces: “After the authorization I will speak with the company”. Stop, at least for today.
“I would like it to be clear that the EU and the US are the only continents capable of producing what will be needed globally to solve the covid crisis”, continues Breton. “At the end of 2021, between the US and the EU we will be able to produce between 500 and 600 billion doses”. For the rest, he adds, “we will help our African friends and also the Russians who have difficulty producing, but first we must think about what we do in the EU”. In short, Russia equals Africa.
The chosen direction looks west, the USA: the president of the European Council Charles Michel also says in a letter released today and written on purpose to exalt the European plan, confirming how much the strategy is jammed and under attack in all the nation states.
“We should not be fooled by China and Russia, both regimes with less desirable values than ours, as they organize very limited but widely publicized operations to provide vaccines to others – writes Michel – According to available data, these countries have administered half the doses. per 100 inhabitants of the European Union. And Europe will not use vaccines for propaganda purposes. We promote our values ”. And down to praise the merits of the European plan, which indeed there are: “The EU was the driving force and the main donor in the international fundraising that allowed the financing of research on vaccines”, “Without Europe, many countries would not have received their first doses yet ”and“ the largest or wealthiest Member States would have been first in line and best served, while the others would not have received a single dose yet. This would have created first and second class European citizens, which is unacceptable! ”.
As for the export block, the Italian decision to stop the export of 250 thousand Astrazeneca doses destined for Australia, although adopted under the new EU regulation and supported by Ursula von der Leyen, triggered feelings of guilt at European level and the need to defend against accusations of protectionism. The EU “has never blocked exports”, writes Michel, “it has only set up a system to control the exports of the doses produced in Europe”. While “Great Britain and the United States have imposed a ban on the export of vaccines or single components of the serum produced in their territory”.
Already. In the United States, the ban was decided by the old Trump administration. But the new one led by Biden has not yet eliminated it, despite wanting to collaborate with the EU to recover the transatlantic axis, which has ended up in crisis in the last five years. For the new president, too, the plan is to vaccinate Americans first, an ‘America first’ in a democratic sauce. And this is the other weak point of the European strategy, now that it has deliberately decided to focus on Washington.
In the meantime, even without official declarations, the EU states are looking around, in an attempt to resist the criticism of national public opinion on the flaws in the European plan. From the Italian government they reiterate that they have no prejudices on Sputnik but no decision will be taken without the authorization of the EMA. As the Russians make deals with companies in EU countries, it is foreseeable that the pressure on the drug agency will increase, especially if the European plan does not get back on track as Breton promises.
In the meantime, the East continues to teach autonomy from Brussels. After opening to Russians and Chinese (for some time), Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis will be in Israel on Thursday to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The objective is to create a “research and development fund” and to initiate “joint investments in the production of anti-covid vaccines”. Orban and Babis join Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen who embarked on a similar initiative last week.
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