The idea of the new Draghi government to increase the production of vaccines by exploiting the Italian industrial possibilities is a first proof of the close level of European coordination that the new prime minister wants to follow as a compass for his work at Palazzo Chigi. In fact, Italy is also among the European countries that have contacted the EU Commission to participate in the collective effort to produce more vaccines. And this is the European plan to get out of the tunnel of a vaccination campaign that is still too slow. The European leaders will discuss this in the virtual summit on Thursday, the first for Draghi in his new role as Prime Minister (another video conference of the 27 on defense and security will be held on Friday). But it is a plan that does not appear to offer immediate solutions to the shortage of vials to fight the pandemic.
It is a plan that has its own timeframe, “on average 6-7 months” to enable existing plants for the production of vaccines, according to the opinion of experts in the sector heard by Huffpost. But it takes even more, “a year”, if the plant in question is not already equipped with a bioreactor. However, as they see it in Brussels in close coordination with Berlin, Rome, Paris and the other capitals, there is no solution that gives more immediate effects. For his part, Draghi also has in mind to focus a lot on the development of the Italian vaccine Reithera, even if in this case the times are also longer.
“A number of member states have contacted us to offer their industrial capabilities” in an effort to collectively participate in the production of anti-covid vaccines, said European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic at the end of the EU General Affairs Council held today by videoconference. Among these countries there is precisely Italy.
On Thursday, while Draghi will be meeting with the other European leaders via videoconference, the Minister for Economic Development Giancarlo Giorgetti will meet the heads of the pharmaceutical companies to start work on the Italian part of the European plan. First objective: to make agreements between pharmaceutical companies and companies that have patents to produce in Italy.
The latter is the weakest point of the whole European plan, not only of the Italian side of course. The companies that hold the patents will have to sell the technology for the production of vaccines in factories that do not belong to their industrial chain. Will they do it? The plan does not include obligations, even though the European Commission could have used the compulsory licensing instrument provided by the World Trade Organization in the event of serious health emergencies. It did not do so, preferring the path of negotiation at a national and even European level. And negotiation either.
After the tug-of-war with Astrazeneca which – according to today’s news – expects to deliver to the EU less than half of the doses promised by the contract for the second quarter of this year (less than 90 million compared to the 180 million vials foreseen by the contract), Ursula von der Leyen has set up a special task force led by Commissioner for Industry Thierry Breton with the task of pulling the EU out of the quagmire of vaccines.
The new European plan therefore also has a face: Breton, in fact, French, former director of France Telecom and former president of the Atos group specialized in digital services. The Commissioner has embarked on a real tour of the continent’s pharmaceutical plants to check production standards and levels. He started on February 10 with Thermo Fisher Scientific, subcontracted by AstraZeneca to produce components for vaccines in Belgium, then visited the Lonza factory, which is doing the same for Moderna in Switzerland. And yesterday, accompanied by a bevy of journalists, Breton was at Pfizer’s plant in Puurs in Belgium, where 50 million doses are produced per month which should be doubled by June.
In total, “we expect 300 million doses for the second quarter of this year”, is Sefcovic’s forecast, so far only “40.7 million” have been delivered. Too optimistic forecast? There is no better one, European sources answer you. “It’s a struggle,” Breton admits. And to those who ask him if the EU shouldn’t have moved earlier to speed up the production of vaccines, the Frenchman shrugs and replies: “Well I’m here now”.
In the series, we leave the errors in the past, after von der Leyen’s self-criticism in the European Parliament, and we try to plan better for the future. “In mid-March – announces Sefcovic – the EMA should also authorize the Johnson & Johnson vaccine”. And then “the first important appointment of the year will be the Global Health Summit in May in which I will be next to Prime Minister Mario Draghi in Rome – announces von der Leyen – It will be a moment to reflect on the lessons learned but also to agree on a common plan of preparation so that the world is never caught off guard again. Everyone, governments, international organizations, scientists, civil society, companies, everyone must contribute to it ”.
In the meantime, however, the ‘Sputnik practice’ would seem to be on the high seas, after the cooling of relations between Brussels and Moscow on the wave of pressure from the new Biden administration in the US. “The Russians are good at math, physics, biology and more but they don’t have the industrial capacity to guarantee mass production of Sputnik,” says Breton.
Ahead of Thursday’s videoconference on the European plan to speed up vaccine production, European Council President Charles Michel held talks with European leaders. Today it was Draghi’s turn, in a group with Angela Merkel, Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa, Greek Kyriakos Mitsotakis and President von der Leyen.
Draghi has established a direct line with the German Chancellor, she is the first and so far the only EU leader with whom she has had a telephone conversation since taking office in Palazzo Chigi. And Merkel is particularly alarmed about the pandemic. “We are in the third wave”, said today in a party meeting, the CDU, while among the German Länder there is chaos, many governors have decided to reopen some activities starting next week despite the new threat of the virus variants. 30 percent of infections in Germany.
On Thursday, the leaders will also have to discuss another aspect of the fight against the pandemic on which they have so far failed: European coordination on border controls, always invoked, never put into practice. Germany is one of the six countries ‘recalled to the Schengen order’ by the European Commission, in a special letter to which they will have to respond within ten days. The other states that have come under fire for introducing too strict border control measures are Belgium, Finland, Hungary, Denmark and Sweden.
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