As non-apology apologies go, it was right up there with the best of them. Speaking to MEPs today, the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen accepted that some ‘mistakes had been made’ in the procurement of vaccines against Covid-19.
Apparently the Commission had been a little too late authorising some of the shots, it had been a tad too optimistic about production, and not everything had gone according to plan. But, heck, these things happen, she went on to argue. And perhaps most crucially of all, the alternative would have been far, far worse.
‘I can’t even imagine if a few big players had rushed to it and the others went empty-handed,’ she said. ‘In economic terms it would have been nonsense and it would have been I think the end of our community.’
If the EU had spent more money and agreed contracts sooner, then research and production would have been accelerated
But hold on.
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