U.K. politicians unite in criticism of EU vaccine threat

The U.K. government and opposition politicians are showing a rare united front on the European Union, with both sides criticizing the bloc as it prepares to restrict exports of vaccines to its former member.

The EU measure is aimed at companies that it says haven’t met delivery obligations to the bloc. It will likely reject authorizations to export AstraZeneca Plc’s coronavirus vaccines and their ingredients to the U.K. until the drugmaker fulfills its contracts, according to a senior EU official.

The move, which comes as the bloc struggles to accelerate its inoculation program, risks creating a further deterioration in relations with London. The vaccine issue, as well as trade and tensions over Northern Ireland, are straining the fragile post-Brexit relationship agreed on in December.

“I don’t think the EU is helping itself here; I don’t think it’s helped itself much in the last few weeks and months on the whole question of the vaccine,” U.K. opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer told LBC radio on Monday, joining Prime Minister Boris Johnson in condemning the bloc’s actions. “I don’t think we should go down the road of banning exports.”

Earlier, Helen Whately, a junior U.K. health minister, told Sky News that “vaccine nationalism, this kind of breathless speculation about limiting supply doesn’t do anybody any good.”

EU leaders meeting later this week will discuss the vaccine plan, but not all governments support such a dramatic step, giving Johnson a chance to persuade some to reject the idea.

He’s called EU leaders about the dispute in recent days, including Dutch premier Mark Rutte and Belgium’s Alexander De Croo and plans more conversations before the meeting, a person familiar with the matter said.

The EU official, who asked not to be named because the decisions are under consideration and haven’t been made public, said that there are no outstanding requests for U.K. exports from Astra’s production facility in the Netherlands, but should such a request be made, it will likely be rejected. A production plant in the Netherlands and one in Belgium produce ingredients for the Astra shot.

The Times newspaper reported Monday that U.K. may share stockspiles at the Halix site in the Netherlands. The newspaper said that if the EU limits demands to those, then the British government will negotiate.

Astra has been at the center of the EU’s vaccination problems since first cutting delivery targets because of a production problem. Most recently, its shot was temporarily suspended in much of Europe over blood-clot fears.

While the EU drug regulator backed the vaccine last week, and U.S. trial results published Monday said there were no safety concerns, public trust in the shot has plummeted in Europe. The majority of people in Germany, France, Italy and Spain now see the vaccine as unsafe, a survey by YouGov published by The Telegraph on Monday shows.

Such public concern could be bad news for the EU, which is struggling to overcome a slow start to its inoculation campaign.

The European Commission said last week that it would restrict exports of vaccines to countries that don’t reciprocate or that already have high vaccination rates.

The U.K. is the largest recipient of doses made in the EU, receiving 10 million of 42 million shots exported by the bloc so far. The EU has previously demanded AstraZeneca use doses manufactured in the U.K. to meet its contractual obligations to the bloc.

“This is not about banning vaccine exports, this is about making sure that companies deliver on their contracts,” EU Commission spokesman Eric Mamer told reporters in Brussels on Monday.

But Pfizer Inc. has warned that the free movement of supplies between the U.K. and the EU is critical to the production of its own vaccine. Manufacturing of lipids—the fatty substance used to deliver the genetic material at the heart of the vaccine Pfizer makes with its German partner BioNTech SE—takes place at a secret location in the U.K. before shipping to the EU where the shots are completed.

The EU isn’t alone in having supply issues. The U.K. is facing a “significant” four-week cut to the supply of Covid-19 vaccines from late March. A delayed shipment of the Astra vaccine from India and a batch requiring re-testing are behind the disruption.