Ireland’s EU envoy did not hold back this week in his excoriation of the European Commission over a botched rollout of vaccine export controls that risked impeding cross-border trade with Northern Ireland.
Tom Hanney voiced his criticism to Björn Seibert, the top aide to European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, in a meeting of ambassadors in Brussels. He lambasted the “very serious mistake” made on January 29 and reversed within hours, diplomats said.
But more revealing still was other member states’ muted reaction to the Irish broadside. Many countries, including France, Italy and the Netherlands, called instead for unity over the bloc’s vaccine strategy.
It is a sign of how EU national and institutional leaders are circling the wagons against criticism, including by some prominent politicians in Germany, of the bloc’s slow vaccine rollout compared with the UK and US.
Whatever the difficulties, it is in the shared interests of both the…