Court of Auditors report shows a mixed picture. EU countries slowed procurement.
Vienna/Luxembourg/Brussels. A report published this week by the European Court of Auditors partially puts into perspective the harsh criticism that the EU Commission was exposed to in winter 2020/2021: While progress in vaccination with corona vaccines in Great Britain and the USA was relatively rapid, many EU citizens still had to waiting months for vaccination.
The EU’s procurement process was launched later, the report said. However, the reason for this lies less with the Commission than with the fact that some member states in the so-called “steering committee”, which coordinated procurement, were reluctant to make financial commitments for the purchase of the vaccine. In the “FAZ” Peter Liese, MEP of the CDU, is quoted, who also clears up the rumor that the Brussels authorities are solely to blame for the initially small order quantity of the more expensive mRNA vaccines from Biontech/Pfizer and Moderna: “Countries like Poles didn’t want to spend anything on it,” Liese said, according to “FAZ”.
However, the Commission is to blame for the fact that – in contrast to London and Washington – it did not expressly regulate how to deal with supply shortages in the contracts concluded with the pharmaceutical companies: massive supply bottlenecks in spring 2021 slowed down the vaccination speed in the EU again.
On the other hand, the Court of Auditors gives a positive assessment of the fact that the EU, through its central procurement system, has succeeded in “establishing a wide range of possible corona vaccines and securing a sufficient number of vaccine doses”. According to the broadcast accompanying this report, the EU had to act before clear scientific data on the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine candidates were available. (red.)
(“Die Presse”, print edition, September 17, 2022)