14 NEWS Best columns: Europe
TURKEY
The Greeks are finally talking to us again about
our maritime border disputes, said Yahya Bostan,
but only because they lost their cynical gamble
on Libya. Greece and Turkey have been at odds
for years over Greece’s absurd claim that it
controls the entire Aegean Sea and much of the
natural gas–rich Eastern Mediterranean. Athens
pretends that every tiny Greek islet, even a rock
just a few miles off the Turkish coast, entitles
Greece to an exclusive economic zone in the wa-
ters for miles around. Such a policy conveniently
forces “the containment of Turkey”—which has
the longest Mediterranean coastline—“within
a small portion of the sea.” In 2019, Ankaracountered Athens’ “maximalist demands” by
signing an agreement on maritime borders with
Libya’s United Nations–recognized government
in Tripoli. The Greeks retaliated by supporting
Libyan rebels led by the warlord Gen. Khalifa
Haftar, pinning “their hopes on a coup d’état.”
Turkey sent troops and other support to bolster
Libya’s “legit i mate government,” and Haftar’s
rebellion recent ly failed. A reluctant Athens has
now returned to the negotiating table—but it has
increased defense spending fivefold and refuses to
discuss its illegal militarization of Aegean islands.
Is this true negotiation? Or are they feeling us out
in preparation for war?Czechs are a mistrustful lot, and it has taken a
massive public-health campaign to persuade us to
get vaccinated against Covid-19, said Lubos Pal-
ata. In an October poll, only 30 percent of Czechs
were willing to get the jab; that figure edged up
to 40 percent in December. Now that the vaccine
rollout has begun, about 60 percent of Czechs say
they will roll up their sleeves—still not enough for
herd immunity, but getting there. It helped that
the country’s first Covid shot was administered to
Prime Minister Andrej Babis on national TV. But
even that display was dissected by online conspir-
acy theorists, who claimed the camera angle didn’tshow the needle actually entering Babis’ arm. So
why are some of our leaders now undermining
Czechs’ shaky support for inoculation by propos-
ing that we all take an unapproved Russian vac-
cine? That’s what former Health Minister Roman
Prymula did last week, saying the government
should bulk-buy the Sputnik V shot to ensure we
have enough vaccine doses for all Czechs. But for
skeptical Czechs, bypassing the EU approval pro-
cess would “discredit the whole vaccination pro-
gram.” We barely trust our own scientists, much
less Russian ones. Forcing a Russian vaccine on a
Czech “would be the stuff of nightmares.”Re
utersWhat a humiliating “blunder,” said
Cécile Ducourtieux in Le Monde
(France). The European Union was
forced last week to walk back its threat
to restrict vaccine exports to Britain via
Northern Ireland, a plan that would have
violated the spirit of the recently signed
Brexit trade deal. The spat began in
January when British-Swedish drugmaker
AstraZeneca announced that it would
deliver only one-third of the 100 million
doses it had promised the bloc in the first
quarter of 2021. AstraZeneca blamed
production issues at its European plants.
But suspecting the company of hoarding doses for Britain, Brus-
sels announced it would set up a vaccine export barrier between
the Republic of Ireland, an EU member, and the U.K. province
of Northern Ireland. That blockade would have stopped vials of
Pfizer’s Belgian-made vaccine from crossing the border. Prevent-
ing a hard border from going up on the island of Ireland was a
key goal of the four-year-long Brexit negotiations, so Dublin and
London were furious with the EU, with one British ex- minister
calling its threat an “almost Trumpian act.” Under attack from
all quarters, Brussels quickly abandoned the plan.The EU is desperate because it has thoroughly “bungled its vac-
cine drive,” said Jack Elsom in the Daily Mail (U.K.). While more
than 13 percent of Britons have so far received at least one dose
of a Covid vaccine, only about 2.5 percent of EU residents have
had a shot. The unwieldiness of the EU is the problem. Brussels
decided to centralize its purchasing power, believing that it would
be cheaper and more efficient to buy doses as a bloc rather thanas individual nations. But the EU was
“paralyzed by endless back-and-forth”
among its 27 member states. Poor coun-
tries were desperate to keep prices low,
rich countries were barred from buying
their own doses, and EU bureaucrats
kept insisting that pharmaceutical man-
ufacturers assume liability for adverse
outcomes. The predictable result was “a
shortage of supplies that has left mem-
ber states reeling and leaders in Brussels
lashing out at Big Pharma.”The EU failed not only to place orders
for vaccines but also to invent them, said Silke Wettach in
WirtschaftsWoche (Germany). The EU appropriated a mere
$3.25 billion for vaccine development. In contrast, the U.S.—
home to about 100 million fewer people—put $10 billion into
Oper a tion Warp Speed. And the Amer i cans lavished that cash on
companies right away, giving $1.6 billion to AstraZeneca, which
only got $400 million in advance from the EU. But we can’t blame
Brussels bureaucrats alone for this stinginess. When the bloc’s
Covid rescue package was negotiated last summer, “nobody was
calling for massive support for vaccines”—not French President
Emmanuel Macron and not German Chancellor Angela Merkel.This fiasco underscores the wisdom of Brexit, said The Daily
Telegraph (U.K.) in an editorial. The “slow-moving, unresponsive,
bureaucratic nature” of the European Union is “especially disas-
trous” in an emergency. And its willingness to abandon its com-
mitment to free trade at the first opportunity is revealing indeed.
“It was Brussels, not London, that turned nationalist and nasty.”Greece’s
greedy
sea grab
Yahya Bostan
Daily Sabah
CZECH REPUBLIC
Preparing an AstraZeneca shot in the U.K.Don’t give us
more reasons
for skepticism
Lubos Palata
Denik
European Union: London and Brussels battle over vaccines