Tribune. This year, Europe’s 71st birthday (May 9, 1950) echoed the first anniversary of the European recovery plan, which symbolizes the colossal panoply of public policies deployed in response to the health, economic and social crisis of the coronavirus. . However, the response to Covid-19 has highlighted several structural weaknesses that have appeared in the recent history of Europeans.
Thus, the vaccination policy is revealing. The group purchasing of vaccines was a very good initiative. If there had not been this strategy of group purchasing of vaccines, the member states of the European Union would have placed their orders in dispersed order and would have competed with each other.
The European Commission acting for the 27 has also sought to obtain the lowest possible prices. Considering the health emergency, it was a bad idea. But Brussels wanted to negotiate prices as fair as possible to be in tune with a significant part of European public opinion wary of the enormous profits that certain pharmaceutical companies might be going to make with the vaccination against the epidemic.
Short-sighted and without strategic or prospective vision
The Europeans, unlike the Israelis and the British, have finally refused to use the so-called “emergency marketing authorization” procedure for vaccines against Covid-19. They used a conditional marketing authorization, after having carefully studied the scientific data. On this point, we cannot content ourselves with pointing out the European administration.
This decision taken by the Commission and the European governments all together reflects the fact that European society is characterized by a greater aversion to risk, and a lower appetite for innovation or for recklessness, than in the United Kingdom, United States or even China. Demographically aging, Europe has become a region of the world less bold than elsewhere.
Finally, the Europeans realized that in fifteen years, they got rid of the production of certain basic health products, such as masks. By aligning their industrial strategies on the international division of labor and the theory of the comparative advantage of nations which is optimized by world trade, Europeans (industrialists, banking sector, political authorities, consumers) believed themselves to be clever and economical; they were reckless, short-sighted and without strategic or forward-looking vision.
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