Lucinda Creighton: This is a war, and Big Pharma must be conscripted into battle

The EU’s response to the vaccine roll-out has been dispiriting. Massive state intervention is urgently needed to ramp up vaccine production by pharma giants

‘Ursula von der Leyen’s weak performance in recent weeks might be easily forgotten if she were capable of mobilising EU resources and infrastructure to support the manufacturing effort for the production of vaccines’

The full effect of the poor handling of the EU’s vaccination programme is still being felt, more than two weeks after the EU Commission threatened to trigger article 16 of the Northern Ireland protocol to the EU-UK exit treaty.

The fallout from that grave error of judgement on the commission‘s part has been significant, with relations deteriorating between Brussels and London and opponents of the protocol agreement seizing on the Commission’s error to try to ...