The EU’s vaccine catastrophe is a crisis of its own making

As news emerges that both Pfizer and AstraZeneca are cutting supplies of their Covid-19 vaccines to the EU by up to 60 per cent, EU officials are turning on the drug companies, threatening fines and lawsuits if they don’t speed up deliveries. The Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has blasted the delays as unacceptable and threatened to take the companies to court. While the European Council President Charles Michel is threatening to use ‘all the legal means at our disposal’ to make the drugs companies ‘respect the contracts’ signed with the EU. But hold on, because on closer inspection it turns out that much of the unfolding vaccine catastrophe in the EU is of its own making.

The daily rankings of vaccination campaigns are making increasingly uncomfortable reading for most European countries. While Israel has managed to issue a remarkable 40 doses per 100 of its population, and Britain and the United States 9.3