EU vaccine farce already vindicates Brexit – Yorkshire Post Letters

I FULLY agree with Bill Carmichael (The Yorkshire Post, January 29) that the EU vaccine debacle is another proof that Brexit was the correct decision for the future of this country.

Amongst the questions which must be asked is why was the EU a full three months behind the UK in ordering supplies of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine?

Why did it take the EU regulators a month longer to approve the use of the vaccine than it took those of the UK?

Why was the EU slower to approve than the likes of India, Mexico, Argentina and a number of other countries?

It can only be that EU authorities cannot accept that third country scientists and statisticians are just as capable as their own.

Why is it that the EU is threatening to prohibit the export of vaccines produced there to third countries rather than working to overcome mutual problems?

That would surely be an illegal act produced by panic at the shortage of vaccine brought about by their own incompetence.

The threat to introduce a hard border on the island of Ireland, and then quickly remove it after a storm of protests, beggars belief.

The whole sorry episode suggests that the EU is currently a petty and dysfunctional protectionist bloc.

We can only hope that it will reform itself once the pandemic is over.

From: James Bovington, Church Grove, Horsforth, Leeds.

TONY Blair stated the EU Commission’s immediate response to the apparent vaccine shortage was foolish. However this inappropriate act was soon reversed once the Irish Prime Minister got involved and demonstrated that the much derided Commission can be politically controlled by one of the least populous members.

The fiasco over vaccine supply within Ireland couldn’t have occurred had the UK remained a member. London was home to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) which moved to Amsterdam losing hundreds of British jobs. Now, in self-imposed exile from the EMA, our regulator MHRA can no longer contribute to any agreed pan-European response.

I admit that this hasn’t been the Commission’s finest hour. The vaccine rollout throughout the UK is being commendably well delivered. None of this proves it was better to renounce membership of the EU Single Market and Customs Union.

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