European Union Chief Ursula von der Leyen ithreatened on Thursday to ban exports of Astra Zeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine, if the EU did not receive the promised deliveries from Astra Zeneca.
The warning came during a virtual summit of 27 EU leaders who raised concerns over the current vaccine shortage in the EU and urged AstraZeneca to speed up its vaccine delivery to the EU.
Ursula von der Leyen said that AstraZeneca, “has to catch up, has to honor the contract it has with the European member states, before it can engage again in exporting vaccines.” The aim of the warning is to ensure the European citizens “can get their fair share of vaccines.”
But some EU countries such as Belgium and the Netherlands are concerned that the plan would lead to the risk of a trade war. What’s more, the rest of the world — which makes the raw materials needed for vaccine production — might stop shipping them to Europe, If exports were stopped.
The EU has been criticized mainly by the UK and the World Health Organization for “vaccine nationalism” after it imposed export controls on EU-produced vaccines.
In response, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned that a “blockade” would be “unwise.”
He said the proposed ban would jeopardize Britain’s vaccination campaign, which has so far been more successful than the vaccination programs of most EU member states.
In response to Boris Johnson, EU Chief explained that EU was the biggest vaccine exporter in the world.
Earlier, the EU president tweeted that about 77 million doses of the vaccine had been exported to 33 countries since December.
“In the next three months, the EU will receive three times as much vaccine as it has since the beginning of the year”, von der Leyen said at a news conference after the EU video summit. So far, all EU member states have received about 88 million doses of vaccine, and more than 4% of the EU population has received two doses of vaccine.
