Pro-Brexit think tank Facts4EU published the findings of its probe on the day EU leaders staged a virtual European Council meeting to discuss the situation. The bloc is mulling over the possible imposition of tighter export controls on third countries – such as the UK – where a significantly higher proportion of the population has had at least one shot than in the EU27.
Specifically, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has demanded that AstraZeneca delivers on its contract to the bloc before exporting vaccines elsewhere.
However, Facts4EU used the figures published by the EU’s own European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC) to demonstrate that some seven million AstraZeneca doses lie untouched in various EU countries.
Furthermore, some states have not yet used two-thirds of their stock.
The probe reveals:
- France has used only 55 percent of its AstraZeneca vaccines
- Germany has used only 56 percent of its AstraZeneca vaccines
- Six other EU countries have used 50 percent or less: Luxembourg, Netherlands, Romania, Sweden, Portugal, Greece
- Across the EU, only 58.9 percent of available AstraZeneca vaccine doses have been administered
- The rate for all other vaccines in the EU is 83.5 percent
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However, the raid found 29 million doses destined for Belgium and also for poor countries which are part of the COVAX international vaccine support effort – not a single vial was destined for the UK.
Additional, Facts4EU’s report also highlights French President Macron’s description of the AstraZeneca vaccine as “quasi-ineffective” for over-60s.
The World Health Organisation, the US health authorities and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) itself have all since contradicted him, declaring it to be safe.
Facts4EU’s editor-in-chief Leigh Evans said: “The first EU country to ignore the EU Commission’s diktat on only buying vaccines under the EU Commission’s programme was Hungary.
“We invite readers to take a wild guess at which EU country has now vaccinated a greater percentage of its people than any other?
“Yes, that would be Hungary, by a very considerable margin.”
Hungary had not yet caught up with the UK, where more than 50 percent of the population has now had at least one jab, Mr Evans said, but was now” streets ahead of those other EU countries which have slavishly followed the EU Commission’s rules”.
He added: “The EU Commission will not mention this, because it does not like Hungary and its refusal to bow to the EU’s globalist open-borders agenda, but we felt that readers would want to know.
“Today’s virtual summit of EU leaders is likely to get heated.
“We can only wonder how long it will be before the EU Council has to consider the nuclear option of a radical reform of the Commission, replacing its President and many other members.
“No-one involved in the Brexit campaign over the past six years – as we have been – expected such a stark demonstration, so soon, of why the EU machine is not fit for purpose.
“We suggest that the COVID disaster unrolling across the EU has now brought this into sharp focus.”
