So now the European Commission *is* taking AstraZeneca to court, I presume all the EU-sceptics who said the Commission will never dare will eat their words?
Or - more likely - these people will probably now change their position completely and instead say the European Commission shouldn't do this in the middle of a pandemic
In the end the issue is this: was AstraZeneca making "best efforts" to supply the EU or not? Or was their supply chain actually never strong enough to do that?
That's what's going to be tested. Which seems fair enough to me.
tl;dr: the worst of 🇪🇺's supply woes are behind it now...
1/11
22-29 January was really the low point
22 Jan: AZ scaled back its delivery forecast to the EU for Q1 from 100m to 31m
29 Jan: von der Leyen caused all the controversy by including reference to Art 16 NI Protocol in the transparency mechanism
2/11
But that transparency mechanism was when it all began to turn. For it allowed the EU to explain what vaccines were going where - and also highlight how much of UK's early vaccine success was based on exports from the EU
On 28 February this NY Times piece by @SharonLNYT:
"The initial 3.9 million [J&J] doses were manufactured at its factory in the Netherlands; officials have said the rest of the doses were expected to come from its Baltimore plant." (that's Emergent)
"Have you seen that Express is rebroadcasting one of your Euronews interviews?" @RobHarrison_EU asked me earlier
"What?" I replied
And so they are... here I am saying there is "fear in Brussels at the moment" in a clip on the Daily Express site
A 🧵 on fake news
The story is titled "Brussels chaos: UK tells EU it's all set for WTO rules as Australia deal gives huge boost" and is dated yesterday, Saturday 24 April
I have never even spoken to Euronews about the EU-Australia trade deal
Listening to BBC Radio 4 Briefing Room with @DAaronovitch explaining the German Grüne and why Baerbock is Chancellor candidate. It interviews @fazbub and @chantalS_T. It has some interesting background, but I'm not sure it really explains what's going on
It makes the case the rise of the Grüne was a sort of counterweight to the rise of the AfD in 2015-2017. That's not really right I think. The programme doesn't really explain the headaches of other parties that help the Grüne.
Also I am not sure you can understand what the Grüne could do without asking where they'd manage to get agreement with coalition partners.
@SophiaBesch talking on foreign policy at the end of the programme is the clearest of the speakers.