Covid ‘vaccine wars’ underline failure of capitalist nation states to deal with the global pandemic

Niall Mulholland, Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI)

The European Commission has been forced into a humiliating climbdown following its attempts to control exports of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, which threatened a ‘vaccine hard border’ in Ireland.

The EU’s threat to stop vaccines crossing freely from the EU to Northern Ireland, which remains in the EU’s single market, sparked a diplomatic crisis between the UK, Ireland and the EU. The World Health Organisation became embroiled, warning that “vaccine nationalism” would seriously disrupt the vaccine roll out across Europe.

The row began when the Anglo-Swedish-owned pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca said that manufacturing problems at one of its European factories meant it would deliver only 25% of planned doses to the EU in the first quarter of 2021.

The EU Commission demanded that some of the shortfall to the EU should be made up from the 100 million vaccine doses allotted for Britain. The UK government said that could breach AstraZeneca’s contractual obligations with them, made three months before the EU deal with AstraZeneca.

Having presided over the UK government’s disastrous Covid polices that have left over 100,000 dead – a much higher figure than any other European country – Boris Johnson is desperately driving on the UK vaccination programme, dismissing concerns about effectiveness. However, the EU commission threatened that if AstraZeneca did not agree to its terms, other contracted vaccine supplies to the UK that are made in the EU, in particular the 40 million doses of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine manufactured in Belgium, may be affected.

The EU Commission and its president, Ursula von der Leyen, have come under growing criticism within the EU for its failure to roll out a vaccination programme across all the member states. This follows the decision last year to allow the EU Commission to coordinate the EU’s 27 member-states’ vaccine programmes, which was used to promote the EU’s single market.

However, prolonged bartering with vaccine producers followed, compounded by poorer EU states’ suspicions that vaccine contracts could be diverted to companies in richer France and Germany. This left the EU significantly lagging behind the US, UK and Israeli governments’ vaccination roll out.

As tensions mounted, the EU Commission stated it would impose emergency border controls on vaccines entering Northern Ireland (‘back door’ to Britain) from the EU. The EU commission said it would invoke Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol to impose vaccine export controls on Northern Ireland.

‘Hard border’ fears

The ‘Northern Ireland Protocol’ was agreed after years of painstaking Brexit negotiations between the EU and UK, and sees an ‘open border’ in Ireland. This is partly due to fears that a hard border would be a potent symbol of the partition of Ireland, becoming a target for armed dissident republicans and broader nationalist opposition, marking a return to a militarised border and dangerously inflaming sectarian tensions in the North.

Article 16 has a ‘safeguard’ clause to override the Protocol but few commentators would have expected it to be invoked a mere month after the implementation of the Brexit agreement. The EU Commission referred to the risk of “serious societal difficulties” in the EU if it could not deploy enough vaccines to justify invoking Article 16.

The EU Commission’s actions led to a severe backlash from London and Dublin. Irish government ministers, Sinn Féin and even arch-pro-EU nationalist politicians in the North warned that the Good Friday Agreement and ‘peace’ were being undermined.

Arlene Foster, the Democratic Unionist Party leader and First Minister of the Northern Ireland Executive, called the EU’s actions a “hostile” act.

The EU Commission’s plans raised hackles internationally, as capitalist governments scramble to obtain adequate vaccinations.

Canada, Japan and South Korea all raised objections to the EU’s requirement that manufacturers get permission before despatching Covid-19 vaccines outside the EU. The International Chamber of Commerce warned that export restrictions could lead to retaliation from other countries and “have a devastating impact on global vaccine supplies”.

Facing such an intense international backlash, the EU Commission did a quick about-turn and republished its vaccine shipment control measures with Article 16 removed. But the Commission warned that it will take measures needed to ensure vaccine supplies are not going to ‘third countries’. Separately, France and Germany have threatened AstraZeneca with legal action over shortages of vaccines.

The DUP and hard-line Brexiteer Tory MPs have used the crisis to push the Boris Johnson government to demand scrapping of the Protocol and a renegotiation of the Brexit agreement with the EU.

Tory Brexit bite-back

Arlene Foster and the DUP are under pressure from their support base after having supported Tory Brexit plans, only to find their ‘red lines’ crossed in the eventual deal. This has resulted in an ‘east-west border’ created in the Irish Sea, with checks on goods coming into Northern Ireland from Britain.

Red tape and bureaucracy has led to delays and shortages of some foodstuffs and goods to Northern Ireland, with conspicuously empty shelves in shops. Graffiti opposing the ‘Irish Sea border’ has appeared in loyalist areas and loyalist paramilitaries are believed to be behind threats against goods inspectors, leading to a suspension of checks on animal and food products at Larne and Belfast ports.

The vaccination rows reveal the callousness of the ruling classes across Europe. The insanity of the profit system sees capitalist nation states, within and outside the bosses EU, at each other’s throats. The scale of genuine cooperation, coordination and pooling of resources and know-how needed to deal effectively with the pandemic is impossible on the basis of the system of capitalist competition.

In contrast, a socialist internationalist approach would see big pharma taken into public ownership and run democratically by working class people in the interests of people’s health, as part of a socialist reorganisation of society.