Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Vaccination update

Apparently, AZ has production facilities in the EU that have not been approved by the EMA and therefore cannot produce vaccines there for the EU. They do use those facilities for production of vaccines for COVAX shipments. If the EMA approved those facilities the production capacity for EU destination vaccines would rise significantly.

Even if they create that spare vaccine capacity there are no guarantees that greater availability of AZ vaccine supplies will solve their problems following the continuous undermining of the AZ vaccine by most member states. It seems that no good deed goes unpunished in AZ's not for profit position, the EU childish position has undermined future cost effective vaccination for some of the COVAX poorest nations..

.Astrazeneca sacrificed over £21billion of revenues by selling its Covid vaccine at no profit, it emerged last night.The British company has pledged to produce 3billion doses of the life-saving jab it developed with Oxford University for an average price of just $5 (£3.60) globally – the minimum needed to recover costs. Its decision to forego huge profits is an unprecedented move by a multinational business, prompting the World Health Organisation to hail the jab as a ‘vaccine for the world’.

A barrister explains it eloquently in the Spectator:

Steven Barrett
The EU’s vaccine grab breaches the rule of law

The EU is discussing confiscating and requisitioning private property. It is surprisingly brazen about this. The bloc is proposing both a ‘bespoke’ vaccine export ban and has identified 29 million doses in Anagni in Italy which it wants. The EU wishes to rectify its own error in vaccine procurement. That is a breach of the rule of law.

The rule of law is very simple. It means that no one is above the law and there is one law for all. The EU asserts, regularly, that it has a legal case against AstraZeneca. I, and many other legal commentators, rubbished that assertion in January. But as I stated publicly eight weeks ago, if the EU believes it has a case it must bring one – in the perfectly capable and serviceable court in Belgium. That is the court that governs the contract the EU says AstraZeneca has breached.

Instead, the EU has proposed using powers to pass a new law, in its own favour. We don’t know whether they would win a case in Belgium, even if many believe the bloc doesn’t have a case. But we do know they haven’t waited to find out. Just focus on that and change the parties.

Imagine if Boris had a contract with a pizza company to deliver pizzas to No. 10. Imagine that because there was a global pandemic on, the pizza company had said ‘careful now PM, given the risks we might not actually have enough mozzarella, we’d best only promise to use our best reasonable efforts to make these pizzas’. Imagine none turned up. If Boris sued, our courts would reject any case. So imagine the Prime Minister instead brought a Bill asking the Houses of Parliament and the Queen to say all pizzas made in the UK now belong to him.

This is an intervention in private property rights not seen on the continent since the second world war
We might think that to be a grotesque use of power. We might imagine there would be wide public condemnation and a none-too-kind suggestion that the Prime Minister use the courts like everyone else.

Failing to do so and passing a new law to say you win the argument is abhorrent inside our legal system. It is the action of a medieval king. It is a type of intervention in private property rights not seen on the continent since the second world war.

How does this fit with the assertion that the EU is a rules-based organisation? That is unclear. It is not even clear how this fits with the EU’s own laws and international legal commitments. A whole host of laws protect personal property rights, not least of all human rights laws. That is because none of us should live in fear of the state taking our things.

Very occasionally and in a very limited sense which has not been tested in the modern age, there may be a reason for the state to take things which do not belong to it. The flaw here is that this would generally require an emergency. Is there one?

Vaccine supplies lie gathering dust in EU warehouses. No humanitarian crisis has been triggered. No help has been requested. And we might expect help to be asked for because these are not pizzas, they are vaccines for a deadly illness.

Further, the EU’s plan is not to impose a blanket ban or introduce a blanket seizure of property – the stuff you do in an emergency. Instead, it plans to give the Commission the power to selectively seize things that do not belong to it based upon criteria it applies, at whim. That’s not an emergency, that’s shopping.

It is a fiction to paint some countries as hogging all the vaccines while the poor little EU struggles to get to the front of the queue. By signing vaccine deals early, countries like the UK pledged to fund vaccine development. The EU in signing late helped everyone less. The world has less vaccine because the EU failed. The EU has less vaccine because the EU failed.

It is not even clear the EU can use the vaccines it seizes. Because one of the problems the EU has displayed is it often won’t authorise things on time and takes longer to process any paperwork. Whole factories churning out vaccines other countries said were good enough for them did not make vaccines for the EU, because the EU had not yet approved them.

Lawyers across our country will now dread the inevitable question from clients planning to do business in the EU. They will ask, ‘will the EU not simply take our property if it wants to?’

We will have no answer to that question. When a state begins to act this way there is no protection the law can give you – this is why the rule of law actually matters.

Well we all knew at least one kid like the EU that would take their ball away if they weren't winning, what an absolute shower of double dealers we are indeed well rid.

I have very little time for Doris but investing and pre ordering the vaccine was the best move he has made during his tenure.
The Army and NHS took over and delivered the difficult parts and are amazing.

This may be the EU's future downfall......the most fundamental question is it safe to do business here and secondly if they are capable of enacting such laws today what are they capable of in the future.

Aaaah, back to rabid EU bashing. I'm out.

Rabid definition, irrationally extreme in opinion or practice.

Really????

Whether we like it or not the subject of vaccine rollout is inextricably linked with the EU's performance.

After three years of being bombarded with pro-EU rhetoric a certain amount of pushback is to be expected.

Agreed, and there's a whole thread dedicated to it in the Soap Box. Someone recently got hammered for daring to criticise the Government in this thread. Thought it would work both ways, but obviously not.

I’m for a more balanced view. EU citizens will be feeing that they’ve missed the boat pretty badly, and they’re exporting vaccines almost to exclusion of their own needs, which are pretty desperate. So the politicians had to try something to try to prompt others (us) to be a bit more generous. We’d all feel the same if we turned up to a supermarket to find the someone else had bagged all the toilet rolls. Especially if half of them refuse to use that sort of toilet roll.
Despite the harm it would do us, I’d be in favour of diverting some of our supply to the EU. It would be a major boost to our trade prospects, and I want to go to France this year. Maybe they could have our Pfizer and we could have their AZ which isn’t being used. I’m sure the upcoming talks will decide something like that.
I thought about deleting this but, not much else to do while in lockdown...

A touch of vaccine nationalism (probably more verbal than physical) is inevitable now, at least to appease voters. However the complicated nature of supply chains can make this very counterproductive in the short term (because of critical component sourcing being hit in counter-measures) and longer term (because breaking commercial contracts at a political whim is the stuff of Russia and China, not safe investment nations). This is presumably why smaller nations such as Ireland and Belgium are so anti-vaccine blocking. It's a bit worrying when renowned Luxembourg wine expert Jean-Claude Junker seems like a voice for sense in EU circles...