Macron and Merkel to face vote collapse as EU leaders left in 'uncomfortable position'


European leader Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel both face a reckoning with voters amid a growing backlash at how the EU has handled the continents Covid-19 vaccination programme. Polling in both France and Germany show the incumbents’ support fracturing amid the vaccine crisis. Professor Anand Menon has argued that the upcoming election has governing EU parties in an “uncomfortable position.” 

Channel 4 News presenter Matt Frei told Professor Menon: “What might go wrong in Germany and in France next year when they have presidential elections is that people in government right now could potentially lose power because of the very scrappy, slow nature of this vaccine rollout out.”

The UK in a Changing Europe director replied: “Yes, there is no doubt looking at the polls in Germany that the governing CDU are suffering as a result of this vaccination problem that the European Union is experiencing.

“Incumbents are in an uncomfortable position.

“All the more uncomfortable if they look across the Channel and see what can only be described as the tremendous relative successes of the British rollout.”

JUST IN: Here we go! Brexiteer hails £9tn Pacific trade deal – UK to return as major world player

According to the Our World In Data website, 33.2 million Britons had received at least one jab as of March 27 – vastly better than Germany as of March 26 (12.36 million), France (10.19 million) or Italy (9.21million) for example.

It comes as former Conservative Party leader Ian Duncan Smith, writing in the Telegraph said: “From where I’m standing, the EU is looking more and more like an incompetent organisation full of self-doubt than a Leviathan threat to the UK.

“Small wonder that Bild, the German tabloid, had a recent headline – “We envy you Britain.”

Mr Duncan Smith added: “The EU’s failure to strike early, binding contracts with the vaccine companies has come back to haunt them. Unable to accept their failure, the Commission has tried to scapegoat the UK.

France is also severely lagging behind Britain’s vaccine rollout, sparking threats of jabs blockades from President Emmanuel Macron.

Just 11.7 percent of French adults – 6.1 million – have received one or more Covid jabs, compared to 57 percent of UK adults who have received their first jab.

Mr Macron claimed France would catch up with our vaccination drive “in a few weeks”.

He said: “In a few weeks we will have completely caught up with the British, who will meanwhile be increasingly dependent on us to vaccinate their population.”



Leave a Reply