On Monday morning, Clément Beaune, Emmanuel Macron’s Europe Minister, clipped out the section of his media interview criticising Britain’s vaccination strategy and posted it on Twitter. He declared: ‘What is happening in the UK is not something I envy. It is a strategy of massive acceleration which also means taking more risks because the Covid situation is much worse there.’
Such remarks are becoming something of a habit for Beaune. He fired off tweets lambasting Brexit in the days after the deal was done and grinned broadly in an interview this year when he was questioned about reports that British cabinet ministers had asked him to tone it down on his Twitter account.
Macron has also been critical of the UK vaccination programme. In a conversation with journalists last month he said the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was ‘quasi–ineffective’ for the over-65s, although he admitted he had no data to back this up.
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