Originally Posted by
sircaw
Just read this from Yahoo, one of the most staunch defenders of remain and the eu.
Brussels was determined to force AstraZeneca to its knees at the start of the week but by the end of it, it was the European Union which was left humiliated.
Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, today faces calls to resign amid accusations of a “vaccine nationalism” and fierce criticism in her home country of Germany.
Mrs von der Leyen, who had taken personal charge of the AstraZeneca issue, badly botched the response to the pharmaceutical company’s failure to fulfil EU orders of jabs.
She had moved to impose a “vaccine border” on the island of Ireland as she stepped up threats to impose an export ban on jabs to Britain. At a stroke, she trashed the bloc’s reputation worldwide and sacrificed the moral high ground the Commission had taken over the Irish border during Brexit negotiations.
Her decision to trigger Article 16 of the Brexit treaty’s Northern Irish protocol achieved the once unimaginable feat of uniting an unimpressed Michel Barnier, Irish prime minister Micheál Martin and Boris Johnson against her.
Mrs von der Leyen ordered a U-turn late on Saturday and blamed the crisis on “an oversight” - but the damage was done. Brussels had spiralled out of control, turning its own member states against it and ignoring their instructions.
It should have been very different. How had Mrs von der Leyen managed to turn a week that should have been a crowning moment for her administration into such an unmitigated disaster?
Brussels had planned for the first AstraZeneca jabs to be rolled out across the bloc once the European Medicines Agency approved the vaccine on Friday.
The European Commission, which negotiated the supplies on behalf of the 27 member states, would use the delivery as a symbol of the benefits of EU unity.
The inconvenient fact that the EU’s vaccination rollout was lagging far behind Brexit Britain would soon be forgotten in a flood of up to 400 million jabs; enough to vaccinate about half of all EU citizens.
If they are criticizing the Eu, i mean damn, its really really bad.