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mahrgell
Germany1193 Posts
Add to this, that the EU was massively financing AstraZeneca... So I'm not sure why people feel like the EUs anger is unjustified. Sure, lawyers would say, that it looks like the EU had the weakest contracts of all clients of AstraZeneca, so AZ decided to cut the deliveries to the EU first, because the penalties for failed delivery would be higher elsewhere. But if you decide to play this dry game of "the contracts allow it", well... this retaliation is also allowed. | ||
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Silvanel
Poland3783 Posts
I mean lockdown/coronawirus has both immense economical and life cost. People are losing their lives and livelihood everyday. Every month wasted waiting for vaccine causes uncountable loses. Any EU citizen who puts wellbeing of a company over lives of their fellow citizens has his priorities misaligned. I myself am supporting any measures short of going to war that secures vaccines for EU citizens. This what EU was made for. You guys are alos forgetting that there were negotiations ongoing with AstraZeneca and they broke it. They fought the company has upper hand in this game. | ||
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Acrofales
Spain15328 Posts
On January 30 2021 19:11 mahrgell wrote: The origin of those measures was, that AstraZeneca told the EU to cut the deliveries to the EU, while EU external countries reported, that their deliveries were not cut. Add to this, that the EU was massively financing AstraZeneca... So I'm not sure why people feel like the EUs anger is unjustified. Sure, lawyers would say, that it looks like the EU had the weakest contracts of all clients of AstraZeneca, so AZ decided to cut the deliveries to the EU first, because the penalties for failed delivery would be higher elsewhere. But if you decide to play this dry game of "the contracts allow it", well... this retaliation is also allowed. Sure, but that means South Africa, India, and other countries where other large vaccine manufacturing plants are, have a precedent for doing the same. And I don't think it's wise to set that precedent, as the EU has nowhere near the capacity it needs to manufacture the vaccines it needs internally. This is clearly a legal battle where AstraZeneca promised more than it could deliver (by the looks of things, they promised both the EU and the UK first dibs, but don't have enough production to fill both orders). We should squeeze AstraZeneca for everything we can. But blocking exports is almost certainly shooting ourselves in the foot. | ||
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Yurie
2749 Posts
On January 30 2021 20:01 Acrofales wrote: Sure, but that means South Africa, India, and other countries where other large vaccine manufacturing plants are, have a precedent for doing the same. And I don't think it's wise to set that precedent, as the EU has nowhere near the capacity it needs to manufacture the vaccines it needs internally. This is clearly a legal battle where AstraZeneca promised more than it could deliver (by the looks of things, they promised both the EU and the UK first dibs, but don't have enough production to fill both orders). We should squeeze AstraZeneca for everything we can. But blocking exports is almost certainly shooting ourselves in the foot. I think we have enough capacity to make it in the EU. Would have to cut other medicines out and re-tool a few plants. Problem is more likely in the exact method and setup time for facilities. If we start now we probably see decent volume in 3 months, assuming we know everything about the specific vaccine we want to make. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland15602 Posts
I’m not plugged in to the news cycle 24/7 so maybe I’m missing something, judging from reactions on social media the perception is the EU is throwing its weight around unduly, even amongst the most rabid of Europhiles on my friends lists. If the issue is more akin to AZ not delivering on promises, or signing up both the UK and EU to the same kind of priority package that they can’t deliver on, and the EU is using mechanisms of redress, that’s certainly not the wider perception. Again, I’m not as plugged in as some of you folks in here, perhaps this was the case. It feels they just took this step without laying any of the PR groundwork for it. The EU apparatus could at least learn some tricks from British politics in this regard, where we ram home non-existent problems to the degree the public swallow the desired ineffective or counter-productive solutions. The EU seems to quite frequently do sensible and justifiable things but without priming people first, so people end up getting pissed about things they might be understanding of if they were communicated better. | ||
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Silvanel
Poland3783 Posts
This has been going on for a month now. I say the action is long overdue, they should have acted sooner but i guess they where hoping the negotations will be fruitfull. | ||
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RvB
Netherlands5483 Posts
On January 30 2021 19:11 mahrgell wrote: The origin of those measures was, that AstraZeneca told the EU to cut the deliveries to the EU, while EU external countries reported, that their deliveries were not cut. Add to this, that the EU was massively financing AstraZeneca... So I'm not sure why people feel like the EUs anger is unjustified. Sure, lawyers would say, that it looks like the EU had the weakest contracts of all clients of AstraZeneca, so AZ decided to cut the deliveries to the EU first, because the penalties for failed delivery would be higher elsewhere. But if you decide to play this dry game of "the contracts allow it", well... this retaliation is also allowed. It's justified to an extent but the EU shares much of the blame for this mess. They negotiated mostly on price instead of deliveries. Negotiations also took much longer than with the UK or US. It's not surprising that they put the EU in the back of the line. | ||
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Dangermousecatdog
United Kingdom6731 Posts
I do wonder though, how much more is UK paying for each vaccine than the EU that AstraZeneca is willing to antagonise the EU. Feels like a game of bluffing is afoot. | ||
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13036 Posts
On January 30 2021 20:01 Acrofales wrote: Sure, but that means South Africa, India, and other countries where other large vaccine manufacturing plants are, have a precedent for doing the same. And I don't think it's wise to set that precedent, as the EU has nowhere near the capacity it needs to manufacture the vaccines it needs internally. It'd be interesting to see the statistics on net exports by the EU on vaccines, but I bet if neither the EU nor all those other countries were willing to export, the EU would still come out ahead in this decision. If the EU doesn't have the capacity to manufacture what it needs internally, it sure as hfil isn't alone in that. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland15602 Posts
On January 30 2021 21:44 Silvanel wrote: Sorry? EU citizens are dying, our businesses are suffering and some greedy company says that it is going to send vaccines somewhere where they are going get better deal. And that company has both received funds from EU and has itself walked out of the negetiations with EU ment to adress the problem. This has been going on for a month now. I say the action is long overdue, they should have acted sooner but i guess they where hoping the negotations will be fruitfull. Don’t disagree with any of that, plus with the added caveat of a big chunk of the British press being naturally hostile towards all things EU anyway, so coverage will reflect that and there isn’t a particular problem with their messaging/actions. People here are just generally up in arms without seeming to have much knowledge about AstraZeneca’s culpability in the whole affair, and activities that seem downright shady and duplicitous. | ||
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KlaCkoN
Sweden1305 Posts
WTF? If the UK is blocking exports from AstraZenecas plants in the UK to Europe until the UK contract is fulfilled then it seems like the only possible retaliatory measure would be to block exports from Pfizer's plant until all EU orders of the Pfizer vaccine are filled? Like what other possible purpose could these export controls have? They also need to start building more factories, yesterday ><. Germany is funding a single Biontech factory in Marburg but that's obviously not going to be enough. No idea what a sensible legal/ownership structure would be since it might not be economically rational or even possible for an individual company to greatly expand manufacturing capacity for a 1-time event. But considering that they are spending an effing €trillion on this recovery fund our leaders should be able to figure this out. This is what they are payed for, not running dumb political campaigns. Shouldn't Bayer or something be able to support large scale manufacturing given a few months to build the requisite factories considering the technology development is complete already? Autarky is looking better by the day xp xd. On a tangential note I'm also slightly confused why these vaccine purchases are happening through the EU in the first place. In principle I agree it makes sense since it's a large external shock that affects everyone in the union more or less equally. But as far as I know the EU, previously to the pandemic, had absolutely no coordinating rule whatsoever regarding health policy or vaccination programs. Meaning that they would have had to invent all the bureaucracy from scratch in real time for this to happen. Presumably that only happened because the member states wanted it so, but I wonder why - it must have slowed things down a lot. /rant lol | ||
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arbiter_md
Moldova1182 Posts
This is where these bureaucrats are supposed to be diplomats and try to help. They could think of something like sharing the patent for limited amount of time so that other companies could set up production. Or help with manpower to make these production lines faster. Anyway, there are 3 approved vaccines already and what we need is to help these companies ramp up production ASAP. Instead they decided that people from EU are more important than people from other countries. And risk a whole lot of other problems with that. All this, while the companies are left to figure out on their own how to ramp production. | ||
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Acrofales
Spain15328 Posts
On January 30 2021 21:44 Silvanel wrote: Sorry? EU citizens are dying, our businesses are suffering and some greedy company says that it is going to send vaccines somewhere where they are going get better deal. And that company has both received funds from EU and has itself walked out of the negetiations with EU ment to adress the problem. This has been going on for a month now. I say the action is long overdue, they should have acted sooner but i guess they where hoping the negotations will be fruitfull. While I understand our politicians should look out for our interests ahead of the interests of other nations' citizens, this highlights one of the main shortcomings in our political structure in dealing with Covid. Right now, with the very limited supply it's understandable we want all the vaccines, so we can immunize healthcare workers and elderly, and hopefully get our society back to something resembling normalcy. However, once the high risk population is done, it's clearly more important, also for me, to immunize the high risk population abroad than it is to get a vaccine to the general population. In other words, I'd rather an ER nurse in South Africa or Brazil gets a vaccine than I'd get one myself. And I don't trust my politicians to be thinking this way: there appears to be a frenzy to just get as many vaccines as possible as soon as possible, and this is not just about short term, but about vaccinating everyone. However, assuming the UK is still vaccinating critical high risk groups, I don't really get the moral outrage that AstraZeneca prioritizes filling their contract over the EU's. It's obviously a legal problem with the contract, but I don't really get the outrage, beyond the logistical fuckup it has caused, which is partially AstraZeneca and partially the EU's own fault. It is bad that people now won't get their second shot in time (possibly rendering the whole program less effective), because AZ didn't deliver the expected doses and some countries (like Spain) not planning properly for that possibility. But a general delay in vaccines just means somewhere else in the world is getting their critical population vaccinated faster, and the only way we are getting out of this is when critical groups worldwide are safe from Covid, and the rest of the population can go back to treating Covid as an individual health risk (similar to smoking) rather than a problem where individuals put their entire environment at risk, while we wait for our turn to be vaccinated. Now as to the legal issue with the contract, clearly there should be consequences for AZ overpromising and underdelivering. But I'd say the main issue is that every country should be getting their vaccines based on necessity, rather than how early they ordered, how much they paid, and what power they can bring to bear on the producer of the vaccines. And in that sense, the EU is showing they are very clearly part of the problem, and not of the solution. And this early on in the vaccination process, I'm sure other countries with production facilities who are further back in the queue than any of us are looking at the whole situation and wondering how they can use the EU's shitty behavior to jump the line a bit themselves. | ||
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Silvanel
Poland3783 Posts
This doesnt look like a smart move (and Russians usually play politics smart) this for me is yet another proof that authoritarian regimes have supprisingly light skin and cannot stand criticism. | ||
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Simberto
Germany8436 Posts
An authoritarian regime is built upon the idea that any protest or criticism doesn't end well for you. Once examples of people protesting and getting away with it exist, it can easily turn into a mass movement that is far harder to contain, and then you get an arab spring kind of situation. | ||
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Silvanel
Poland3783 Posts
And on top of that i am actually old enough to have lived in authoritarian state and i assure You there was plenty of criticism going around. Yet PRL collapsed due to empty shops (economy) and not due to calls for liberty. Most of the Solidarity postulates where economic in nature. In my opinion if authoritarian state is doing well economically (like China for example) no amount of criticism (especially external) is going to bring it down. | ||
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Dangermousecatdog
United Kingdom6731 Posts
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Silvanel
Poland3783 Posts
World really feel like a small place now. | ||
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Biff The Understudy
France7438 Posts
I am happy France joins the very small club of countries that have strong enough institutions that independently of politics, former heads of state can actually be sentenced to jail time. | ||
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Silvanel
Poland3783 Posts
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