Britain is preparing to grant full diplomatic status to the European Union’s ambassador, João Vale de Almeida,concluding a dispute that has strained relations between the two sides for the past year.
João Vale de Almeida took up his post as the EU’s first ambassador to London last spring after Brexit but was denied formal recognition.
Hugely welcome the overwhelming vote by @Europarl_EN for our trade agreement with the EU.
— David Frost (@DavidGHFrost) April 28, 2021
Hope we can now begin a new chapter together as Europeans, characterised by friendly cooperation between sovereign equals.
Thank you @EU_Commission @michelbarnier for helping get us here.
660 MEPs voted in favour of Brexit trade deal
5 votes against
32 abstentions
The EU, in a desperate attempt to deflect attention from its abysmal handling of vaccine procurement and roll-out, is suing AstraZeneca.
Whisper it quietly, but there are 11 million unused doses of AZ in the Netherlands.
In other news, the EU won't make any decision about helping India until sometime in May!
French Industry Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher tells @BFMTV it is "highly likely" that the EU will not renew its vaccine contract with AstraZeneca, preferring new deals with Pfizer and Moderna.
— James Franey (@jamesfraney) April 16, 2021
She expects the Novavax and Sanofi jabs to be ready in the second half of this year
All that fuss and smearing of AZ only foir the EU to ditch it!
I doubt that AZ will be entirely unhappy to lose the EU, given how difficult the EU was to deal with. However, the EU's decision is remarkably risky and costly given:
1 AZ is sold at cost
2 The EU has not yet signed a contract with Novavax!
Johnson & Johnson has paused deliveries to Europe after reports its jab caused blood clots in a few people that received it. EU was expecting a delivery of 55m doses, and without @Airfinity suggests the EU won’t hit a 75% vaccination rate until December 8. pic.twitter.com/8V6g3TRcO3
— Joe Barnes (@Barnes_Joe) April 15, 2021
The EU's vaccination programme has been holed below the waterline by a combination of 3 factors:
1 The deliberate smear campaign orchestrated by Macron et al against AZ.
2 The failure of vdL's vaccine procurement programme.
3 The decision by various countries to pause, restrict and in Denmark's case outlaw AZ vaccinations.
4 The pause in deliveries of the J&J vaccine.
Britain has put family first, wrt Covid vaccines.
The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age reports that
Australia’s early rollout has been propped up by 717,000 doses
manufactured in the UK rather than from factories in Europe as widely
believed.
The need to source jabs from the UK underscores the
difficulties Australia and AstraZeneca have faced in extracting supply
from the EU under the bloc’s tough new export controls. It is now known
that not a single AstraZeneca dose has been exported to Australia from
Europe.
The first 300,000 UK-made doses landed at Sydney Airport on February 28 – one month after the European Commission introduced new curbs limiting the export of vaccines produced on the Continent.
The
Morrison government said at the time that the shipment had come from
“overseas”, which was presumed to be continental Europe, a major hub for
production.
Another large batch arrived on an Emirates passenger plane in March, well after Italy and the European Commission formally blocked an application by AstraZeneca to ship 250,000 doses to Australia.
🚨 BREAKING: The EU has blocked the export of 3.1 million doses of the AZ vaccine to Australia - Australian minister
— Politics For All (@PoliticsForAlI) April 6, 2021
This will backfire on the EU.
Barnier quoted by EuroGuido:
However, today the EU has once again threatened to suspend exports of the AstraZeneca jab to the UK unless the company delivers the vaccines manufactured within the EU to its member countries first, with internal market commissioner Thierry Breton claiming “there is nothing to negotiate” and that “the doses must stay in Europe““It is true that the UK has a quicker vaccination rate compared to the EU. But the fight against COVID 19 is more than speed of vaccination, important as that is… We will all find strong and weaker points in how we managed this. But there is no place, in such a serious situation, for polemics and competition. There are so many more reasons to cooperate, in the short and the long term.”
