EU commissioner says Britain’s vaccine success is down to Brussels

Europe’s vaccine rollout has been a chastening experience for many in Brussels with the World Health Organisation describing it last week as ‘unacceptably slow’. So Mr S was intrigued to read an interview in Der Spiegel today with Thierry Breton, the EU’s Commissioner for Internal Market, in which the top official appeared to take credit for Britain’s vaccination scheme.

Both at home and overseas, the UK procurement and rollout of the vaccines been widely seen as a success, with credit mostly going to the taskforce led by Kate Bingham. Not so, according to a bullish Breton, who claimed credit for all the vaccines produced in factories which happened to be based in EU countries. Asked about British company AstraZeneca not being allowed to export vaccines from Europe, he replied:

Our friends in the UK have two vaccine factories, but only one of them produces. However, of the 37 million jabs that have been used in the UK so far, this facility has delivered no more than a third.