EU bullying over vaccine has been a disgrace

The contributor K. Browne (March 25) would be deserving of congratulation for his brilliant piece of ‘spin’ if it were not

the case that his contribution could be better described as dissembling, because it is obvious where his true feelings lie – anti anyone who voted to leave the EU; painting us as ridiculous ill-informed xenophobes and claiming the EU are not the evil villains they’re being made out to be.

Despite his effort to give the impression that the EU is a benevolent organisation, the facts are that it and its leaders have shown it to be anything but.

The behaviour of Ursula von der Leyen, Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel has been a disgrace. Between them they have caused wholly unwarranted damage to the reputation of AstraZeneca, which did something extremely rare in the pharma industry – it offered its vaccine to the world at cost price (so far the only company to do so) yet this terrible trio and the EU, in an endeavour to conceal their gross incompetence, has accused the company of failing to honour its contracts to them. No mention of course of their failure to place contracts in a timely manner, instead using threats and bullying tactics to unjustifiably jump the delivery queue.

No apology either for all the misinformation trotted out that has caused slow uptake in several EU countries and millions of unused doses sitting in fridges across the continent; despite the fact it has been done in the face of the statements from all relevant organisations that the vaccine is safe.

Their behaviour has been absolutely appalling, made worse because it’s probably already cost lives. They also seem inured of the fact that their behaviour could have repercussions because many international companies that were planning to open an arm of their business in the EU might well be thinking again now, because they have seen its leaders are fully prepared to behave shamelessly, even if that means their actions are to the detriment of everyone else.

One would have thought even the most diehard remainer would be keeping quite now, but not so. Christopher Hudson-Gool