The Telegraph reports:
EU threatens war-time occupation of vaccine makers as AstraZeneca crisis spirals (£)
“The EU sledgehammer is coming down. The European Council is preparing to invoke emergency powers of Article 122 against AstraZeneca and Big Pharma within days.
This nuclear option paves the way for the seizure of intellectual property and data, and arguably direct control over the production process – tantamount to war-time occupation of private companies. This is Europe First pushed to another level. It takes the EU into the territory of 1930s methods and an authoritarian command economy.
Charles Michel, President of the European Council, is being badgered by member states to take action before the escalating vaccine crisis mutates into a political crisis as well and starts to topple governments. He is offering them the most extreme option available in the Lisbon Treaty.
Article 122 allows the EU to take emergency steps “if severe difficulties arise in the supply of certain products”, or “if a Member State is in difficulties or is seriously threatened with severe difficulties caused by natural disasters or exceptional occurrences beyond its control”.
Newsflash: Empire now says Order 66 “was a silly mistake”:
“EU backtracks on decision to block supply of vaccines to Northern Ireland”, the Irish Independent reports.
The EU has backtracked on a decision to block vaccines being transported into Northern Ireland.
The move followed hours of diplomatic chaos after it emerged the EU triggered an article of the Northern Protocol which introduce check on good entering Northern Ireland. This would have allowed EU authorities stop the importation of vaccines manufactured on the continent entering Northern Ireland.
[…]
There were frantic phones calls between Taoiseach Micheál Martin and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen when it emerged vaccines could be stop from moving between the EU and Northern Ireland.
There was also significant backlash against the EU from both sides of the border when the decision emerged.
A Government source said the Taoiseach had not being given any advance warning of the EU decision to invoke the article in the protocol. The source said the article may have been inadvertently triggered by “someone who did not understand the political implications” of the decision.
Meanwhile, here’s a naughty thought on the EU vaccines row … how about saying to the EU ‘OK, we’ll redirect the doses to you that we had earmarked for distribution in Scotland,’ just for the lolz of seeing what Nicola Sturgeon has to say in response?
Plus, maybe we could send them in a lorry driven by someone who has Wiltshire ham and Cheddar cheese sandwiches in his packed lunch, just to see what happens?
I seem to remember Ursula vdL apologizing to Italy in an open letter for the EU not doing more to help.
Now we know that the lack of ‘help’ from the EU has been the best thing that happened to Italy in 2020.
Unclear to me from the snippet (and the article is paywalled):
Are they trying to keep AZ from selling to other contracted customers first?
Are they trying to appropriate the vaccine – steal it – from AZ?
Are they attempting to get more vaccine produced in additional facilities?
Are they simply trying to pressure AZ to hurry?
At a distance, it’s becoming hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys.
(Nice title, BTW!)
Yes.
That is indeed the threat
That are trying to get more from existing facilities that look a long time to gear up because EU took a long time reach an agreement that they filled with all manner of preconditions.
They are trying to pressure AZ to also divert AZ production in UK to EU. I kid you not.
This is a rare occasion when it actually very simple to tell the good guys from the bad guys.
bobby b, see the first comment on this thread on reddit ukpolitics.
Not at this remove, where we’re all too busy watching Gamestop to pay attention to EU/UK fights. 😉 (And, as an aside, if the answer to my questions had been more in line with “they’re usurping the patents in order to produce a lot more vaccine a lot more quickly for their dying citizens”, I might be hard-pressed to defend “but, contracts!”)
Thanks, Natalie, that Reddit article nicely fills it all in. No more actual production, just “send it here, not there!”
(ETA: One more dumb question: if AZ is truly making no money on this vaccine – so I’ve read – why wouldn’t they be eager to hand over the process and get back to making money?)
Nope. I think they were absolutely sure they understood the political implications, it was a strong “Fuck the British” message which can in an envelope marked “Bugger the Irish as well”. The fact that the EU backtracked doesn’t change the fact that the ink is barely dry on the Anglo-EU trade agreement and the EU are already showing their contempt for us and it by their unilateral action.
It does have the benefit of showing the Irish exactly what their EU masters think of them (i.e. barely at all)
…and I’m still glad we left.
Can they make it any more clear Brexit was the right thing to do?
I imagine an EU apparatchik is busily re-writing Aesop’s fables so that the ant willingly shares his food with the grasshopper (and consequently they both fail to make it through the winter).
Isn’t this the start of the process that causes all socialist economies to implode? Nobody is prepared to invest or do business in an area where the government can just arbitrarily take over your assets for the greater good. Property rights are essential to the running of any kind of economy, once the EU abandons them it is doomed. No one’s stuff is safe, better get it moved to a more civilised country before it is stolen by the government.
Recall that this organisation wants an army and control of Europe’s foreign policy. Just sayin’.
Should AZ move to the UK, the USA or elsewhere?
What other EU companies are watching this and getting happyfeet?
Seventeen years ago, Natalie explained why life is still tough for the owners of lazy slaves.
Recent events brought that old post to mind. 🙂
I followed that link and found it an interesting post. I then scrolled left and read a post about stifling EU legislation which I think might prove to be very prescient. The writer could not have known that the UK would now be free to watch the EU circle the drain from without.
The basic point of the European Union is for Corporations to come together with the officials of the European Commission to make regulations that benefit the cartels. Now we are in the position where the European Union is actually attacking one of the vast Corporations it is supposed to help. This leads to an obvious conclusion…..
The European Union benefits no one – not even the vast Corporations it is supposed to benefit in a Corporate State. Therefore the European Union serves no purpose – and SHOULD NOT EXIST.
Are we to understand that Brussels demands ALL the windfall apples, in ADDITION to their fair share?
Is that because of all the fine EU work in UN, Davos, NATO, IMF, Anthropogenic Global Warming, in protecting the rest of us from…the Farmer?
I think they were absolutely sure they understood the political implications, it was a strong “Fuck the British” message.
Without doubt. Where they miscalculated was that they assumed that the lick-spittle media, and their bitches in Dublin, would get behind them as they usually do. They were expecting a “plucky EU stands up against bullying Boris and evil Big Pharma to ensure the rights of its blameless citizens” narrative.
Unfortunately not even their regular cheerleaders at the BBC could side with them this time and they’re being exposed as the vicious, self-serving little shits they are. And the only one on their side is the odious Sturgeon.
“Unfortunately not even their regular cheerleaders at the BBC could side with them this time and they’re being exposed as the vicious, self-serving little shits they are.”
Now that even the BBC have been forced to admit that they are a bunch of utterly immoral scoundrels, how are they going to be able to go back to claiming that the EU is wonderful and that leaving was a huge mistake?
Now that even the BBC have been forced to admit that they are a bunch of utterly immoral scoundrels, how are they going to be able to go back to claiming that the EU is wonderful and that leaving was a huge mistake?
Oh don’t worry. The Beeb will very quickly revert to the EU-Good-UK-irredeemably-bad narrative.
And no doubt the EU, having been burned by this, will in the future stick to its usual sly, underhand manoeuvring and not try overt aggression again. That will make it easier for the Beeb and the rest of the lefty media to continue promoting it as the model of good governance and civic rectitude.
Sadly I’m sure that you are absolutely right.
And yet, as Paul Marks reminds us, there has long been evidence of highly effective treatment lying unused, as noted in this article from TCW.