While Brussels is showing its teeth vis-à-vis the United Kingdom on vaccine exports, Thierry Breton wanted to be extremely reassuring on Sunday, during the “Grand Jury” RTL-Le Figaro-LCI.
Now responsible for supervising the production of vaccines in Europe to boost it, the European Commissioner for the Internal Market reaffirmed that the EU would have the doses necessary to achieve collective immunity in mid-July.
"
We have the capacity to produce and deliver for our fellow Europeans the 360 million doses planned for the end of the second quarter and the 420 million that are needed (...) to start talking about this collective immunity and achieve it
" mi -July, he explained, speaking of "
52 factories working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
”in Europe.
While Europeans are desperate to find a more or less normal life, Thierry Breton even suggested that the tourist season could be "
comparable to that of last year
".
"
The light at the end of the tunnel, we see it
", he assured.
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Vaccines: how Europe fell behind
Is this the case for the British?
Maybe not.
To hear many Europeans, including French MEP Pascal Canfin, the United Kingdom could run out of doses in April, Europeans and Indians having decided, in quick succession last week, to block their exports of vaccines to this country.
The EU's goal is to get London to negotiate.
Ongoing discussions
At the time of closing this edition, discussions were still underway between Brussels and London on the subject.
"
Instead of arguing for the benefit of AstraZeneca, they are trying to have a fair distribution between the doses produced in Europe and those manufactured in the United Kingdom,
" says a European diplomat.
These discussions began a few days ago, shortly after the European Commission announced that it was preparing to tighten exports of vaccines outside the EU, and more particularly to the United Kingdom.
The Twenty-Seven gave the green light to this mechanism on Thursday, during their videoconference devoted largely to Covid-19.
Read also:
Vaccines: the EU fears the "Europe first" approach
Even if the concern is growing across the Channel, the British government is keen to show that it is moving forward.
British Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi told The
Telegraph
on Sunday
that a third dose would be injected into the most vulnerable Britons from September.