Ursula von der Leyen has said a country on its own such as the UK can act more like a “speedboat” than the EU “tanker” but that the 27 governments are right to work together on their vaccination programme.
The European commission president admitted to mistakes along the way in the rollout of vaccines, including failing to invest sufficiently in upscaling production capacity.
She also conceded that the commission “underestimated the difficulties” it would face and should have warned the public in advance of the likely “ups and downs”.
But, in an interview with nine European newspapers, she defended Brussels against recent criticism that it had gone too slowly in agreeing contracts in light of a deal being agreed between the UK and AstraZeneca three months before the bloc.
Von der Leyen, a former German defence minister, said that while collective decision-making could be cumbersome, it ensured poorer EU countries were not left behind, according to the French newspaper La Croix.
“I am aware that alone a country can be a speedboat, while the EU is more like a tanker,” Von der Leyen said. “Before concluding a contract with a pharmaceutical company, the 27 member states had five full days to say whether they agreed or not.
“This naturally delays the process. Indeed, we must constantly put pressure on ourselves so that each step of the decision-making process is as fast and efficient as possible.
“But I am absolutely convinced that the European approach is the right one. On these vaccines, we worked faster than usual. I can’t even imagine what it would have meant for Europe, in terms of unity, if one or more member states had access to vaccines and not the others.”
The EU has administered vaccines to 3.22% of its adult population, compared with 15.5% who have had a first jab in the UK. Israel has administered a jab to 60% of its population.
Von der Leyen said the chief cause of the difference in timescales between the EU and the UK was the slower authorisation process undertaken by the European Medicines Agency than that open to national regulators.
She said: “The UK has chosen the route of emergency marketing authorisations. We have chosen another, and we believe it is the right one.
“Israel is also often cited as a model of success. The country is highly digitalised – and that’s good – but personal health data is given to companies there. This is not something we would want to do in the EU.”
Figures compiled by the data analytics company Airfinity suggest that the US has invested nine times as much as the EU in upscaling manufacturing vaccines although the figures have been disputed by the commission.
But Von der Leyen admitted that the bloc should have put more money into upscaling capacity.
“What I realise, looking in the rearview mirror, is that we should have thought more, in parallel, about mass production and the challenges it poses,” she said. “The industry has never suddenly embarked on such a gamble …
“To increase volumes, to set up new supply chains sufficiently upstream, we could have done it earlier. Now we are working with industry to prepare for the possibility of variants of the coronavirus that can resist vaccines.
“We must immediately support science, so that vaccines are adapted as quickly as possible. Because the best lesson learned in recent months is that you never know what will happen in a year. We must be prepared for all eventualities.”
Last week, the commission had to U-turn on an a move to trigger article 16 of the Northern Ireland protocol in the Brexit withdrawal agreement as part of its attempt to control vaccine exports out of the bloc.
The EU’s executive branch wanted to temporarily override the terms of the treaty to establish a vaccine border on the island of Ireland to ensure that Northern Ireland could not be used as a backdoor for vaccine exports to the UK.
“We shouldn’t even have thought about article 16,” she said. “I regret it. The commission took around 1,500 decisions in a short period of time and almost 900 emergency decisions under very high pressure.”
Meanwhile, during an awkward trip to Moscow, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs Josep Borrell welcomed the development of Russia’s Sputnik vaccine, adding that it would be welcome given the bloc as “facing a shortage of vaccines”.
“It’s good news for the whole of mankind because it means we will have more tools to fight the pandemic,” he said.
Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, said that several European countries were “interested in producing the vaccine on their territory”.
The Czech prime minister, Andrej Babiš, said it may consider giving emergency approval to vaccines not approved by the EU regulator while on a visit to Hungary, which is using both the Russian and Chinese vaccines.
“I have spoken about the Russian vaccine, and about the Chinese vaccine, with Chancellor Merkel, and the chancellor as well as the Bavarian prime minister are unambiguously calling for this vaccine to be approved by the European Medicines Agency,” Babiš said.
“Now of course the issue is whether the producer asks for the approval or not, and we of course want to consider, if we get hold of the vaccine, to go the similar way as Hungary did because time is of essence.”