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EU battles delta variant with omicron next; Sweden government turmoil
Carl Bildt, former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Sweden, shares his perspective from Europe:
How is Europe dealing with new omicron version of the pandemic?
Well, I mean the big issue isn't really that one, the big issue if you see the havoc that is created in several European countries at the moment is the delta. The delta is making impressive strides, particularly in countries that have a slightly lower vaccination rates. So that's the number one fight at the moment. And then we must of course prepare for the omicron as well.
What's the turmoil in Sweden about governance?
Hmm, that's a long story. It goes back to a very complicated parliamentary situation and the fact that the government, the coalition government, and the arrangement that kept in place collapsed. And then we had turmoil and turmoil. And we now have, we are first female prime minister, a very weak coalition government, the budget has been dictated by the opposition. It will survive until the September election. It can't get anything done, but it will survive. And then it's going to be the September election next year that decides the governors of Sweden in the years ahead.- Hard Numbers: Dorsey resigns from Twitter, Barbados ditches the ... ›
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Why Italy's third COVID lockdown is different
A year ago, a horrific series of photos of overflowing hospitals in Italy's Lombardy region made many Americans realize that this pandemic was going to have devastating results. And now, over 100,000 deaths later, Italy is entering its third lockdown. But this time is different, says former Prime Minister Enrico Letta, because now a lockdown doesn't mean a total economic shutdown. And there's hope on the horizon, as long as the country can get its act together on the vaccines front.
Letta's conversation with Ian Bremmer is part of a new episode of GZERO World, which began airing on US public television stations nationwide on Friday, March 26. Check local listings.
Watch the episode: Italy in Europe's spotlight: insights from former PM Enrico Letta
What We're Watching: EU tightens vaccine exports, Kenya to close Somali refugee camps, Mexico-US border "cooperation"
Europe's vaccine war escalates: As the European Union contends with a resurgence of COVID-19 cases and deaths, and a disastrous vaccine rollout, the European Commission announced Wednesday a proposal to tighten vaccine exports from the bloc, a move referred to by one diplomat as a "retrograde step." The new measures would ban vaccine doses produced in the EU from being sent abroad to countries that don't "reciprocate" as well as those that have a higher per capita vaccination rate than EU member states (the UK falls under both categories). European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen is upping the ante from January, when the EU banned exports by companies that don't first honor their contracts with EU member states. (In practice, only one batch of vaccines from Italy was blocked from being sent to Australia.) This is a massive development within the context of an ongoing row with the UK, which so far has received almost 10 million doses of EU-made jabs, far more than any other country. London also has rolled out a much more successful vaccine drive, having administered vaccines to 45 out of every 100 people, compared to just 13 in the EU. Although EU leaders will discuss the vaccine disaster at a summit later this week, the new proposal will come into force unless most EU members oppose it — an unlikely outcome given that many EU countries are struggling to keep their COVID crises at bay.
Mexico, US border "cooperation:" Mexico has sent federal troops to guard its southern border, saying that only essential travel from Guatemala into its country will be permitted. But the sudden move, which Mexican officials say is to prevent the spread of COVID-19, surely has other motivating factors. Importantly, the deployment was announced just days after Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador confirmed that his country would receive 2.7 million vaccine doses from the US — at the exact same time that the Biden administration is struggling to deal with an influx of migrants from Central America along its own southern border with Mexico. While both sides deny that this amounts to an "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" scenario, given the timing, it's hard to imagine that the developments are unrelated. It's a win-win: On the one hand, the Mexicans get the vaccines they need to deal with surging COVID cases and deaths, while Biden enlists Mexico's help in stemming the flow of migrants to the US, which is becoming a political quagmire for his nascent administration.
Kenya kicks out Somali refugees: Kenya has given the UN two weeks to prepare for the closure of the country's two main refugee camps. Most refugees in the sprawling camp, overseen by the UN refugee agency, are from its northern neighbor Somalia. If the facilities are not shuttered by then, Nairobi says it'll move its occupants across the border, and let the Somalis deal with the ensuing humanitarian catastrophe. Kenya has been threatening to shut down the camps — which together host over 400,000 people — since 2016, citing concerns that Somali refugees allegedly helped al-Shabaab militants carry out deadly attacks inside Kenya. The move was previously blocked by the High Court in Kenya which said it would be unconstitutional, but now, amid rapidly deteriorating bilateral relations with Somalia, the Kenyans say they are pressing ahead either way. Last December, Mogadishu cut ties with Nairobi after accusing the Kenyans of meddling in their internal affairs by hosting a Somali separatist leader. Kenya responded weeks later by withdrawing from an International Court of Justice trial over a maritime dispute with Somalia. And to top it all off, the US has pulled out its troops from Somalia, paving the way for more insecurity. If the Kenyans don't back down, the camp closures are certain to usher in fresh instability in the Horn of Africa.
A perfect AstraZeneca storm is brewing in Europe
"The fact that you made worse decisions in the past shouldn't be an excuse to make bad decisions in the present." — Sanhita Baruah, a poet and author.
How else can one process the mess now unfolding in Europe, which has already been struggling with the mission of the moment: getting COVID vaccines into arms. The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, one of Europe's main lifelines, has made headlines in recent days, though it can be hard to discern "whether it's a real signal or whether it's just noise."
The backstory: The European Union has been betting on AstraZeneca to inoculate much of its population (it purchased 400 million doses) and restore normalcy. But after dozens of blood clotting events occurred in people who had received the jab, a handful of European countries moved to suspend the rollout pending an investigation by the European Medicines Agency.
Critics say that the move is an over-reaction because the cases are far below the number of clotting events that would be expected in the general population, while cautioning that coincidence and correlation are not the same thing.
Did the EU muff it — again? Brussels has already been broadly criticized for bungling its vaccine drive. But it seems not to have learnt from past mistakes, and again, has made a series of missteps in recent weeks.
Initially, some EU countries restricted the AstraZeneca jab to people under 65, citing a lack of safety and efficacy data. Some later reversed course, but the damage had been done, with many Europeans expressing hesitancy to take a vaccine first cast as of dubious quality.
And more recently, when AstraZeneca and the World Health Organization pleaded with Brussels to continue rolling out the jab, Brussels sounded the alarm, resulting in political heavyweights Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Denmark, and Norway hitting pause on vaccinations.
Sowing seeds of doubt. Many experts believe that the EMA will soon determine that the AstraZeneca vaccine is safe and encourage European governments to resume the rollout. But in sowing the seeds of doubt without good cause, Brussels has already deterred people in Europe — home to some of the biggest anti-vaccine communities in the world — from rolling up their sleeves. The flip-flopping and excessive caution coming out of Brussels surely won't convince more Europeans to get vaccinated and help hard-hit countries move towards herd immunity.
More crucially, the longer it takes to immunize people, the more likely that new variants develop that are more resistant to current COVID-19 vaccines, which will in turn lead to preventable deaths and deepen economic pain. Time simply isn't on the EU's side.
A combustible situation. This setback comes as many European countries are experiencing surging COVID caseloads. More than three quarters of Italians have now been ordered back into strict lockdowns as Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi warns of a "new wave of contagion." Similarly, European states like France, Hungary, Poland, Germany, and the Czech Republic are grappling with new waves of infection forcing new lockdowns and border closures. "Spring in the European Union is going to be dismal," one commentator recently wrote.
For months, pandemic fatigue — and the political backlash — have been slowly setting in. Germans, frustrated with a lockdown in place since last November, took their anger out at the ballot box last weekend by giving Angela Merkel's CDU party its lowest vote percentages in decades in two state elections.
Spreading fear abroad. But the effects of the European fiasco resonate far beyond the continent. The COVAX facility has banked its success on the AstraZeneca jab, which is cheaper and easier to store than other vaccines on the market. Many low and middle-income countries participating in the COVAX scheme don't have the luxury of pausing rollouts and changing tack midway. It's for this reason that the World Health Organization cautioned the EU to reassure its residents rather than rile them up.
EU shame: As Brussels lags behind, EU countries are increasingly buying jabs from China and Russia to make up the difference, and turning to Israel for help in managing vaccine distribution. For now, the EU's embarrassing missteps continue, costing precious time — and precious lives.
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Hope for Europe's vaccine rollout; CDU setback in German elections
Carl Bildt, former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Sweden, shares his perspective on Europe In 60 Seconds:
How is the rollout of vaccines in Europe going?
So-so might be the best answer to that question. The UK is significantly ahead of most of the EU countries. It's being difficult to rollout production or increase production sufficiently fast. But it will get better in the coming months. And I hope that the evils of vaccine-nationalists can be prevented.
What's the fallout of the German regional elections over the weekend?
I think there will be significant fallout from them. It was a setback for the governing CDU in Berlin, governing CDU, no question about that. Even more so for the sort of radical nationalist AfD. But prior to the September election, it has now widened the options for governance of Germany after that particular election or the discussion about that. A government without the CDU seems, well, if not likely, but then at least possible. But it has changed the landscape. But it's early days. September is a long way away, but German politics looks somewhat more dynamic after these elections.
Was the EU’s bungled vaccine rollout inevitable?
"We're still not where we want to be," European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said this week about the European Union's sluggish vaccine rollout. It was a sort of concession from the EU chief, who's been criticized for overseeing a bungled inoculation rollout in the world's largest trading bloc.
To date, around four percent of the bloc's population has been vaccinated, compared to 13 percent in the US, and 20 percent in the UK.
Why has the EU rollout been so slow, and what does this mean for Europe and its politics?
Stronger together? EU states are usually responsible for their own public health policies, but the 27-member bloc shifted course last summer by deciding to procure vaccines as a single bloc. While this approach prevents larger and richer countries (Germany, France) from buying up all the stock and leaving smaller and poorer ones (Bulgaria, Romania) behind, the process has been a bureaucratic and logistical nightmare.
For starters, before it could ink a deal with a pharma company, the Commission had to hold lengthy negotiations, and wait for individual EU countries to sign the contract separately. Hampered by political machinations, the back-and-forth took months, costing the bloc precious time.
The EU's vaccine procurement strategy also appears to have slowed things down. Focused on obtaining drugs at the lowest cost, Brussels — which signed a deal with AstraZeneca two months after the UK did — bargained with drug companies while other governments pursued a whatever-it takes strategy, buying up the jabs first.
When asked about the speedy vaccine rollout in Israel, for instance, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, we "did not quibble about the price of vaccines." Of course, Israel only had to secure vaccines for 9 million people, compared to the EU's 450 million. Still, during a deadly pandemic, a 7-day negotiation delay can result in a large number of deaths.
Aversion to risk. The EU made clear from the start that it was not going to rush the vaccine regulatory approval process. While the US, Canada, Britain and others were willing to give speedy emergency authorizations for use — often bypassing traditional clinical trial protocols — the EU took an unhurried approach, authorizing the Pfizer vaccine on December 21, three weeks after the UK. This was further complicated by supply shortages, with pharma companies reneging on commitments made to the EU.
The Union also has other challenges to contend with. In France, home to a large anti-vaccine movement, some 60 percent of adults recently said they would not get a COVID jab, compromising France's bid to reach herd immunity. Compare that to the US, where 67 percent of residents now say they'll get vaccinated.
These factors complicate the EU's efforts to get back to normal anytime soon. It's no small feat that last summer the bloc passed a 750 billion euro coronavirus relief package, where for the first time, all EU countries agreed to share the financial burden of rescuing some members. (Compare that with the responses of EU governments to the sovereign debt crisis that followed the US global financial market meltdown and migrant crisis in 2015-2016.)
But those funds can only go so far in aiding Europe's economic recovery. Tourism-dependent economies (think Greece, Portugal, and Spain) need to reopen soon to avoid worsening economic crises, and that's not going to happen until most EU residents — 20 percent of whom are over the age of 65 — and visitors alike are protected from COVID-19.
Was this shortfall unavoidable considering the enormous task at hand?Mujtaba Rahman, Europe practice head at Eurasia Group, our parent company, says this outcome "definitely was not inevitable; more the result of several tactical missteps made by both the Commission and the member states." Rahman predicts "a reckoning" post-COVID "just as there was in the aftermath of the Greek debt crisis."
Who's filling the gap? Naturally, Russia and China are eager to help. Hungary, an EU member state often at odds with Brussels that has repeatedly criticized the bloc-wide procurement process, has bypassed Brussels by approving Russia's Sputnik V vaccine for use, and sealing a deal with Chinese-owned Sinopharm. Will other EU states follow suit?
The trade-off: The European Commission has prioritized European unity ahead of vaccine nationalism. This has clearly delayed the bloc's pandemic response. But how will voters in wealthy EU countries respond when they next go to the polls? Will they agree with Euroskeptic parties that EU unity was not worth the botched outcome? Only time will tell.