Germany wanted to order from Biontech in July 2020 but the EU convinced them to let the EU order for a better "collective bargaining position". But this isn't the time to bargain. Just pay them a few billion Euros. Germany alone is estimated to be currently subsidizing its shut-down economy with around 4 billion Euros a week. Each week is more expensive than what the EU was willing to pay for advanced orders: 2.7 billion.

I never said a thing against public funding. That is not the same thing as developed publicly.

Thinking you can just go and develop a mRNA vaccine sounds like Dunning-Kruger to me. It took decades of research done by highly paid, highly specialized people highly driven towards a business goal and thus profit. I am not aware of any public entity doing that kind of research and actually successfully applying it too. (Yes, the development stands on the shoulders of public basic research. Not the same thing.)

Another issue is the fragmentation of the EU. If there is a pool of funds for a particular research target, the EU has to divvy it between its major countries. So even if a university in country X doesn't have much of a history researching something, they still get funded from the EU pool, as long as their country raises a tantrum over it.

Meanwhile the US' (and most other countries') policy often looks at funding individual projects to one or a few unis at most. More targeted funding = better outputs.

Not that EU doesn't have its successes. Galileo could be called a success, but the road to it was very very bumpy.