Peter Tiede, chief political reporter for Bild, the German daily...
Oh, how we Germans made fun of those strange Brexit birds with the weird Euro-populist Boris Johnson at their head. Marching out of the EU. Ridiculous! Well, they’ll soon see what they’re left with. Without Europe. All alone.
Now we see it. All of us — 83 million Germans, and all of Europe — undersupplied with vaccines, left lagging behind not only the US and Canada but also Britain! Of all the people, it was Johnson who got it right: he ordered vaccines for the British in time, generously and sufficiently. In surplus!
And we? We have done everything wrong and are struggling with a vaccination disaster. Germany, of all countries! Industrial power, clever nation, kings of cleanliness and order. We screwed up. We ordered too little, too late. We were too stingy, too lame. As a result, Poland and Hungary are already wondering what on earth the EU is all about.
In Germany, vaccination appointments for the elderly have had to be cancelled, if they actually got any at all. There is chaos in the land of order. We are confused. Self-doubt leads to anger: we will not have vaccinated 70 per cent of Germans before the autumn. And that is the best-case scenario.
This is devastating on a human level for the people who urgently need the vaccine and for those who will die because they did not get it in time. It’s also devastating on a political level: the US launched the biggest vaccine procurement programme in history last April and the UK started ordering soon after that. Johnson negotiated as tough as nails and paid well for them.
And what did the EU do? It created the biggest confidence-destroying programme in its history. On top of this, Brussels and the governments of the EU states have managed to confirm the old prejudice of a sluggish Europe. Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, denies all blame. Whistling loudly in the dark and thus damaging even further any confidence in her ability to run the EU. Music to the ears of the populists and anti-democrats.
Von der Leyen started a dispute with the vaccine supplier Astrazeneca, which was supposed to look daredevilish but was just dumb. She has disgraced Europe.
As Germany’s defence minister, she had already failed miserably in the procurement of helicopters, aircraft and weapons. Angela Merkel ordered her away to the European Commission. Just as Europe has been doing for decades with its discarded political personnel: disposed of like nuclear waste in the final repository of Brussels. That is the story that Johnson has told the British again and again. He, the European populist. Now, we agree with him.
Worse still, Von der Leyen has either knowingly lied to 447 million Europeans or didn’t know what she was talking about. Both are intolerable.
The EU’s contract with Astrazeneca reveals that the commission negotiated badly and did not secure any binding rights. It did not do what it is supposed to do: take care of our Europe. And our 27 governments either did not intervene or intervened too late.
The contract with Astrazeneca and the vaccination disaster are a declaration of bankruptcy for Brussels, an indictment of the 27 member states. An insult for us Europeans and especially for convinced Europeans like me. And the fact that we in Germany can only vaccinate at a snail’s pace, that we are left behind by countries like Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates, is our humiliation. Especially when we look at the island that once belonged to our EU.
It is embarrassing because now we are the fools.
