Confusion surrounding the recommendations for the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine is forcing the European Union to rethink its vaccination campaign. The official target of 70% of EU citizens vaccinated by September 2021 is unlikely to be met. Meanwhile, Boris Johnson and Joseph Biden promise their citizens a liberating summer.
Everyone is trying to understand how the leaders of the EU, who swim in diplomas and money, perform on par with the most incompetent minister in Brazilian Republican history, General Pazuello.
Some errors seem obvious. Brussels, miserly and naive, has seized on London and Washington in the race for agreements with the pharmaceutical industry. Pushed by primary nationalism, Paris insisted to the limit on the failure of the “French vaccine” project. For the usual suspects, the embarrassment is only one more proof that the contradictions of the European project, a sort of truncated federalism, make the fight against the economic and health crises difficult. Basically, they want to proclaim, for the umpteenth time, “the beginning of the end of the European Union”.
The reality is more complicated. The EU may be an opaque and inefficient institution, but it offers resources that are simply inaccessible to most member countries. On the block of 27 nations, only half a dozen would be able to face the pandemic independently. Portugal, Greece and others would hand over highways and ports to the Chinese and Indians in exchange for masks and vaccines.
Perhaps the problem is not only in the EU, still an easy target, but also in the capacity of states to organize their respective societies. Since the 2008 financial crisis, many European middle powers, with the exception of Poland and Hungary, which have regressed to authoritarian regimes, have been run by remarkably fragile governments. Spain lives under the constant threat of new elections and Belgium has spent two years without a majority in Parliament. France, which has not re-elected a president since Jacques Chirac, has a fascist leader practically qualified for the second round of the next presidential elections.
To compensate for the lack of legitimacy, politicians appeal to old managerialism. Emmanuel Macron delivered the French vaccination campaign to a large international consulting firm. Italy, for the second time in ten years, has “called Meirelles” and handed over the government to a banker who has never had a vote in his life, Mario Draghi. Symptomatically, the anti-vaccine movements in these countries cover the entire ideological spectrum and vaccine reluctance is reaching record levels: in Louis Pasteur’s France, only 40% of the population intends to be vaccinated.
The instability of national politics cannot be attributed solely to the progress of the EU. For half a century, social democracy has developed with the project of European integration. The main difference with the current times is that individuals like François Mitterrand and Willy Brandt have been gradually replaced by mediocre managers, unable to articulate European issues and local anxieties. If the current crisis exposes something on Europe, it is the limit of the cult of technocrats.
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