How a WHO push for global vaccines needled Europe

Last April, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen added Europe to a global effort to ensure equitable access to a vaccine, which she said would be deployed "to every single corner of the world."

But despite pledging billions of dollars for the scheme set up by the World Health Organization (WHO) and publicly endorsing it, European Union officials and member states repeatedly made choices that undermined the campaign, internal documents seen by Reuters and interviews with EU officials and diplomats show.

A year after its launch, Europe and the rest of the world have yet to donate a single dose through the vaccine scheme, which is part of an unprecedented effort to distribute vaccines, tests and drugs to fight the pandemic. Diplomats say Europe's ambivalence stemmed partly from short supplies and a slack start to the global campaign, but also from concerns that the EU's efforts would go unnoticed in a vaccine diplomacy war where highly publicised promises from China and Russia were winning ground, even in its own backyard.

The programme, coled by international agencies and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), is a bulk-buying platform to share doses worldwide. But with the administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump having turned its back on the WHO, the plan, called COVAX, was slow to win support and focused on using funds from rich countries to buy doses for less-developed ones.

Von der Leyen presented Europe's support for the COVAX campaign as a gesture of international unity. EU officials privately cast the bloc's vaccine aims in a less altruistic light.

"It's also about visibility," that is, public relations, Ilze Juhansone, SecretaryGeneral of the EU Commission and the Commission's top civil servant, told ambassadors at a meeting in Brussels in February, according to a diplomatic note seen by Reuters. Juhansone declined to comment.

A senior diplomat said many of those at that meeting felt Europe, which is by far the largest exporter of vaccines in the West, had goals that would be better served by plastering "more blue flags with yellow stars" on vaccine parcels and sending them out itself, rather than through COVAX. Brussels, which is coordinating vaccine deals with its members, has reserved a huge surplus 2.6 billion doses for a population of 450 million so far. It has promised nearly 2.5 billion euros ($3 billion) in support to COVAX.

That made the EU the biggest funder until the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden pledged $4 billion this year to the plan, which aims to distribute 2 billion doses by the end of the year. But supplies for Europe's own population are behind schedule, and despite giving funds, the EU and its 27 governments have also hampered COVAX in several ways. Like other rich countries, EU nations decided not to buy their own vaccines through COVAX, and competed with it to buy shots when supplies were tight. All except Germany offered the overall programme less cash than requested.

More than this, Europe promoted a parallel vaccine donation system that it would run itself, to raise the EU's profile. "There is huge frustration because there is a feeling that right now the race is on but we're not really out of the starting blocks," a senior diplomat told Reuters.

"We're spending money on COVAX and the return in terms of political visibility is nil." Russia says it wants to supply vaccines to countries directly. China has pledged support to COVAX.

But both Moscow and Beijing have separate deals to deliver more than 1b doses to Africa, Latin America, and to EU partners such as Turkey, Egypt, Morocco and Balkan states that are candidates to join the bloc. Most doses will take time to be delivered, but Russia and China have already exported about twice COVAX's deliveries of around 40m doses.