Comment by libertine | Hacker News Reader

Comment by libertine | Hacker News Reader

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No country is making vaccines, yet are allowing for their production and exporting. Well, some countries at least, in this case the EU, China, India and Russia so far. The only countries that haven't allowed exports are USA and UK.

The EU could take both the US or the UK route to prevent these exports:

- The EU could rightfully, and has the power to, prevent exports that are essential in a period of crises - which clearly applies to the current situation in Europe. This is the USA route, and it's legitimate.

- The EU can control AZ exports to guarantee they are fulfilling their contractual obligations, which AZ has been literally joking in the face of the EU. This is the UK route, and it's legitimate.

What the media is currently reporting is the second one, the EU is forcing the manufacturer to comply with their contract. If this overlaps with the UK contract, well then that's something I believe the UK must deal with the manufacturer like the EU has been doing for the past 3 months.

I just don't get the double standards, the UK enforcing a contract is good... the EU doing the same is... bad?

> I just don't get the double standards, the UK enforcing a contract is good... the EU doing the same is... bad?

Well, it looks like British tabloids are influencing this point of view in English speaking countries.

This is one thing that I've never noticed until the whole vaccine endeavor started, the amount of propaganda British tabloids pump it's mind boggling and quite honestly scary.

They tailor narratives and pump the crap out of it, even if it contains wrong information or if it's things completely irrelevant of what's being discussed but that supports the narrative.

> The EU can control AZ exports to guarantee they are fulfilling their contractual obligations, which AZ has been literally joking in the face of the EU

Using such executive powers for handling contract dispute is authoritarian move. These powers should be used for impartial regulation of market, not for contract dispute where EC is one side. In liberal democracies, contract disputes even with government are handled by courts.

The rules allowing are already done.

The executive implements those rules.

It's as authoritarian as what the US or UK did, or many other countries when they limited the exports of PPE and some medicines.

Such rules are in an emergency scenario - which the EU currently is in, with third waves all over Europe, and a lot of the vulnerable citizens yet to be vaccinated due to the terrible job AZ has been doing.

If there's a time to trigger these mechanisms is now.

You're just trying to reframe this into a way of controlling the market, which is wrong and biased. This is already beyond a contract dispute, it's about saving lives, and the cost is to make a single pharmaceutical company accountable for their mistakes and their promises.

Just like the UK is doing what it needs to do to have his contract fulfilled to save british lives, by not allowing exports of AZ vaccine by enforcing the contract that's making AZ partially fail the EU contract, the EU will use it's own mechanisms to ensure the safety of EU citizens.

> Just like the UK is doing what it needs to do to have his contract fulfilled

the UK isn't doing anything special. they just signed a better contract than the other guys.

what the EU should have done is recognised their mistake and fix it via a massive injection of funds. instead they decided to fund the recovery and penny-pinch on the vaccines.

in any case, this whole non-issue is politicising of the lowest degree. the EU will get more vaccines than Africa or Asia as a whole in a few weeks, making this whole discussion moot.

>the UK isn't doing anything special. they just signed a better contract than the other guys.

This is yet another one of those narratives pumped by British media: "the better contract". This is meaningless, because AZ still signed a contract with the EU that clearly states that no other commitment should overlap with such contract. So they are either forcefully or willingly choosing to fulfill some contracts over others - none of those reasons is an excuse. That's AZ problem, not EU problem.

In case you didn't notice it's only working for vaccines made in the UK (which according to AZ CEO the UK didn't allow any exports of that production).

Basically the UK is enforcing the company to fulfill their contractual obligations, where they have power to enforce it, which is in the UK, and that's fine.

But you can't expect other countries not to do the exact same thing - which is what the EU is doing. And now Boris is lobbying around to try to stop this, and of course the short-sighted vaccine nationalism of not allowing the company to fulfill other contracts came around to slap him in the face.

There's no goodwill towards Boris government, and now they want to make a deal with no leverage, after months of bashing the EU for trusting a free market and a private company while the UK hoarded the full local production without any transparency (yes those records are private for "security reasons").

Good luck with that.

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