Austria and Denmark forge ‘vaccine alliance’ with Israel

The EU’s coronavirus vaccination strategy was under growing strain on Monday as anxiety over the bloc’s sluggish inoculation drive triggered internal divisions on how to fight the pandemic.

Austria and Denmark intend to forge a “vaccine alliance” with Israel to fight future waves of coronavirus, while Slovakia announced that it is buying 2m doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine.

Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz and Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen are travelling to Jerusalem this week to discuss a new joint-approach with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, officials from Vienna and Copenhagen told the Financial Times.

An Austrian chancellery official familiar with the plans said that at the core of discussions were plans to construct in-country production facilities for mRNA vaccines. The three countries are in talks with Pfizer and Moderna about the factories.

Austria has already identified an intended site for manufacture, the official added, indicating the extent to which the scheme is already well-advanced.

The three will also discuss pooling vaccine stockpiles, although the sharing of surplus vaccine supplies is likely to be a sensitive topic. Sharing small shipments of excess supplies of vaccine with allies has already caused some political turbulence in Israel. The EU, in common with countries such as the UK and US, has measures in place that allow it to curb vaccine exports.

We may well be in a situation where we not only have to vaccinate, but also revaccinate, maybe once a year . . . That’s why we need to boost vaccine production sharply.

The planned “alliance” threatens to undercut the EU’s collective vaccine procurement run jointly by the European Commission and member states, spelt out in an interview with the FT by president Ursula von der Leyen only yesterday.

It also appears to contradict the general support for joint EU vaccine procurement from smaller member states, which lack the economic heft bigger countries such as France and Germany can use to do deals. The commission said it had not been informed of the Austrian and Danish plans and so was not in a position to comment.

Speaking at an event to mark the end of lockdown in Denmark on Monday, Frederiksen said the discussions were not a vote of no confidence in the EU, but stressed that Denmark and Austria had been forced to go it alone in order to boost vaccine capacity.

“We may well be in a situation where we not only have to vaccinate, but also revaccinate, maybe once a year . . . That’s why we need to boost vaccine production sharply,” she said.

She refused to rule out any possibility, including production of the vaccine in Denmark, as the centre-left prime minister argued it was important not just to focus on the “here and now” but also the next “two, three, five, 10 years”, with the proposed alliance to focus on “long-term” vaccine production.

Austria too has been careful to avoid publicly criticising the EU, but in private officials say Kurz has been deeply frustrated by the way Brussels has handled securing vaccines.

Kurz has a particularly close relationship with Netanyahu, and the possibility of a co-ordinated approach to vaccine rollout between the two countries was first raised last May.

According to Israel’s already-advanced planning to tackle any future phases of the pandemic, an in-territory mRNA production facility will help secure a further 36m doses of vaccines to cover the next 12 month period.

Israel also envisages being able to rapidly research, develop and deploy booster vaccines to tackle emerging variants of coronavirus in the coming months and years, Netanyahu said in a press conference on Sunday. Austria and Denmark hope to partner with Israel in such research efforts.

Israel continues to receive uninterrupted supplies of the Pfizer vaccine, and has ten million doses of Moderna’s jab, and at least 8 million of AstraZeneca’s vaccine either in cold storage, or due to arrive within months.

The number of member states looking to boost scarce vaccine supplies with jabs not yet approved in the EU is growing, even though some countries in the bloc have failed to use deliveries made to them under the bloc’s joint procurement scheme.

Polish officials revealed on Monday that prime minister Andrzej Duda has been in touch with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping over the potential procurement of Chinese vaccines.

Slovakia has agreed to buy 2m doses of Russia’s Sputnik vaccine, becoming the second EU country after Hungary to decide to take the shot, which has not yet been approved by the European Medicines Agency.

Prime minister Igor Matovic hailed the arrival of the first batch of Russian vaccines at Kosice airport in eastern Slovakia on Monday evening, and said that the shot would be approved by the country’s health minister later in the day.

On Sunday, the Czech Republic meanwhile, said it intended to approve use of Sputnik V.

And Hungary has already begun rolling out both Russian and Chinese jabs.

Additional reporting by Mehul Srivastava in Tel Aviv, Michael Peel in Brussels and James Shotter in Warsaw