On covid-19, the recklessness of UK's politicians poses a continued threat to Europe (EN)

Notwithstanding its successful vaccination campaign (which has been often put in contrast to EU's comparatively sluggish record), the United Kingdom is currently suffering another wave of the coronavirus pandemic, driven by the very contagious 'delta' (a.k.a. 'Indian') variant.

How this came to be is well known, and clearly linked to political decisions made by the UK Government. But the consequences could be very dire for continental Europe.

Indeed (see map below), the countries in the EU currently most affected by the new surge in cases are exactly those who recently welcomed UK tourists with few restrictions or none at all: Portugal and Spain. From there, as recent history demonstrates, it's only a matter of time before the fresh pandemic wave sweeps across the continent.

After last spring's third wave of covid-19 in Europe was driven by the 'alpha' variant of the virus that originated in England, it's now the second time in half a year that the UK is the gateway for a pandemic wave affecting the continent. The main explanation for this recurrent hazard is the continued recklessness in managing this health crisis by the British authorities.

And nor is it set to end.

Este Romania prea rigida in administrarea dozei a doua de vaccin anti-covid? Statistici, explicatii, interpretari... (RO)

Romania a inceput relativ bine campania de vaccinare anti-covid, fiind de-a lungul lunii feburarie printre primele tari din UE ca numar de doze de vaccin administrate la suta de locuitori. Dar la sfarsitul lunii februarie a franat brusc ritmul vaccinarii, fiind ajunsa din urma de media UE. A mers apoi in pas cu media UE pana in ultima saptamana a lunii martie, cand Romania a inceput sa ramana tot mai mult in urma mediei la dozele administrate - nu ca ar fi incetinit, ci pentru ca celelalte tari au accelerat semnificativ, in timp ce tara noastra a ramas intr-o viteza 'de croaziera' de cca. 55.000 de doze de vaccin administrate zilnic (spre comparatie, Franta, care a inceput mult mai incet in ianuarie, a ajuns recent la peste 500.000 de doze pe zi, cu o populatie doar de 3 ori si jumatate mai mare decat a Romaniei).

Graficul de mai jos al numarului de doze de vaccin administrate la suta de locuitori ilustreaza aceasta evolutie in trei acte: Romania deasupra mediei UE in februarie, in pas cu media UE in martie, si ramanand din ce in ce mai mult in urma de atunci.

Aceasta ramanere in urma nu este deocamdata dramatica. Chiar daca Romania este acum printre tarile din UE cele mai intarziate cu vaccinarea, inca nu a pierdut contactul cu plutonul si mai poate recupera daca accelereaza campania de vaccinare in perioada urmatoare, mai ales ca in tara au intrat pana acum doze destule (cu peste 2 milioane mai multe decat numarul dozelor deja administrate). Penuria de vaccinuri, care s-a manifestat acut in februarie, nu mai este acum o problema - exista doze suficiente pentru a accelera semnificativ vaccinarea.

Dar exista o diferenta in campania de vaccinare din Romania fata de alte tari UE care merita discutata, pentru ca ar putea avea implicatii importante in depasirea mai rapida, sau dimpotriva, agravarea si prelungirea actualului val al pandemiei. 

Diferenta dintre Romania si 'mainstream-ul' european este ilustrata de faptul ca, desi se afla sub media UE la numarul de doze administrate (raportat la populatie), Romania este totusi sensibil peste media UE la proportia celor complet vaccinati (care au primit ambele doze de vaccin):

Cu alte cuvinte, Romania a administrat mai putine doze de vaccin la suta de locuitori, dar are mai multi complet vaccinati (adica a administrat a doua doza in proportie mai mare decat media UE).

Care este explicatia acestui aparent paradox si ce inseamna acest lucru?

Cutting through the noise on vaccines, some counter-intuitive truths (EN)

Without false modesty, this blog has been ahead of the curve on the AstraZeneca (AZ) covid vaccines affair. It exposed almost two months ago the arrogant lies of Pascal Soriot, AZ's CEO, in his attempts to bamboozle the EU into accepting that it should be treated as a second-class client, hinted at the likely foul play by the UK Government and at the toxic mix with Brexit politics. By March, statements made here - e.g. on the de facto vaccine export ban instituted by the UK or on the need to limit exports to ensure that AZ is serving fairly its EU contract - were part of the line taken by senior EU officials, such as European Council President Charles Michel, or European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. 

On the other hand, this blog didn't hesitate to call out the ineptitude of some national leaders' comments on the AZ vaccine and of some national regulators' decisions on its roll-out - a stupidity compounded by last week's temporary suspension of the vaccine in almost half of the Member States, based on mainly political considerations, in spite of the advice of EU's own regulator. And it also criticised the Commission's short-lived intention to invoke Art.16 of the Northern Ireland protocol as a very consequential political gaffe, which gave a pretext for the UK to try to wriggle out of its legal obligations.

As the vaccine-related escalation between the EU and the UK is now in full swing, the ongoing war of narratives creates a lot of noise that can easily distract from the fundamentals. It's therefore timely to take a step back, look at the bigger picture and scratch a bit the surface to bring up some rather counter-intuitive insights. 

I will try to argue that:

• the AZ (and broader covid vaccines) scandal is more of a political stake than an actual public health issue; 
• in the medium term the EU's problem is not the shortage of vaccines, but a very different one;
• UK's apparent triumph on the vaccines is far from vindicating Brexit, rather the contrary; and 
• the EU is very well positioned for success in the longer term, but only if it manages to overcome its existential challenges in the short term.

As Britain's cheating on vaccines is revealed, the EU has a duty to react (EN)

There isn't much to add to CNN's revelations about UK's contract with AstraZeneca (AZ) for on covid-19 vaccines, but it's worthwhile summarising the main facts:

• The British authorities have been apparently trying to keep the deal with AZ as a national security secret, but inadvertently made it available online back in November last year.
• UK's contract with AZ is very similar to EU's contract, in particular with regard to the "best reasonable efforts" clause. 
• UK's contract with AZ is officially dated one day after EU's contract with the company.
• The British contract also mentions that vaccines can be delivered from production sites in the EU, just like the EU contract also lists production sites in the UK.

In brief: no significant difference between the two contracts, whether in respect to the "best reasonable efforts" clause, to the time of concluding the contracts (only a day's difference, with EU's the earlier one) or to the sourcing of the promised supply.

These are explosive revelations and the implications deserve a discussion.

On vaccines, Europeans are shooting themselves in the foot... again (EN)

After the European Commission's blunder on invoking - even briefly for a couple of hours last Friday - Article 16 of the Northern Ireland protocol, which offered a golden opportunity to the UK to pressure the EU into making further post-Brexit accommodations, the Europeans are again scoring an own goal in the vaccines saga.

This time it's not so much about Brussels, but about national leaders and authorities.

The decision by several countries (Germany, France, Portugal, Sweden, Austria, Poland, Belgium... and counting) to limit the use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca covid vaccine to those under 65 (or even under 55 in one country), compounded by statements such as this one by French president Emmanuel Macron, is a big mistake and an act of self-harm on many levels.

It is wrong on the facts. It undermines the EU vaccination strategy and the countries' own vaccination efforts. And it weakens the legal case that the EU has against AstraZeneca for non-performance of their contract to supply vaccines.

Who is the bully now? (EN)

Since I posted yesterday about the escalation of the covid vaccine row between the EU and the UK, events have taken an even uglier turn.

There is no doubt that the EU is on the defensive after its blunder Friday on the Irish border, even if it reversed it within hours (see a more elaborate explanation in my yesterday's post... not such an outrage really, but an extremely bad move politically). But the humiliation of the EU that is feasted in British media and partly across the continent these days doesn't serve any good purpose. It is mostly driven by schadenfreude and fundamentally wrong. And the righteousness and hypocrisy of the British establishment are becoming unbearable.

The EU is presented as the villain from having attempted - in the face of a desperate shortage due to pharma companies reneging on their commitments - to protect its EU-made contracted vaccine supplies from the diversion to other countries. Meanwhile, the UK itself is operating a de facto export ban on AstraZeneca (AZ) vaccines manufactured on its territory, pretending that it has a right to monopolize the supply because it signed a contract earlier, notwithstanding AZ's contractual obligation to also supply the EU from its UK-based factories.

It now transpires that in addition to AZ having shipped EU-made vaccines to the UK last year, Pfizer also has been sending significant quantities to the US, while both companies are failing to deliver to the EU on their contracts. The EU is thus punished not for being slow, but for having leveraged its collective bargaining power to obtain the cheapest prices.

The UK "generously" offers to allow AZ to deliver vaccines to the EU... once it has finished inoculating all its adult population, sometime in autumn. Meanwhile the EU is entering the third wave of the pandemic with very low immunisation rates due to a combination of a slow start vaccination process across its 27 member states and insufficient delivery by the vaccine providers - Pfizer and AZ.

Righteousness and hypocrisy are in even sharper display when it comes to the Irish border. The EU is universally condemned for having announced (and quickly reversed) the activation of Article 16 of the Norther Ireland protocol of UK's Withdrawal Agreement, with a view to prevent backdoor export of vaccines to the UK. But that Article 16 is part of the protocol - so invoking it cannot be construed in any way as a breach of the protocol. Again, as I also wrote yesterday, getting anywhere near Article 16 was a political gaffe... but certainly not an "incredible act of hostility" as Arlene Foster presented it. If invoking Article 16 amounts to a quasi-declaration of war, why was it stipulated in the protocol in the first place?

What was, indeed, an incredible act of hostility were the UK Government's plans, last year, to override the Northern Ireland protocol by creating a different and contradictory legal framework through its proposed Internal Market act (abandoned in the meantime).

But why would British politicians, especially on the tory and DUP side, feign unlimited outrage? Part of the motivation is to change the narrative from last year and present the EU rather than the UK as untrustworthy to uphold its commitments. But more importantly, because they want to use this opportunity to abolish the Northern Ireland protocol altogether and wriggle out of the agreement that they ratified. 

Who is the bully now?

Make no mistake: the public shaming of the EU for the sin of having stood up for itself in the covid vaccines scandal - admittedly having got it wrong politically and subsequently backpedaling on the issue of controlling the Irish border - is not a legitimate reaction born out of genuine outrage. It is a deliberate drive to humiliate and bully the EU in the context of post-Brexit politics, with the ultimate aim to vindicate Brexit.

The dangerous escalation between the EU and the UK on covid-19 vaccines (EN)

The snowballing developments over the past few days, after AstraZeneca (AZ) announced a significant cut in its scheduled supplies of covid-19 vaccine to EU countries, have escalated to a war-like rhetoric between the UK and the EU, a raid by Belgian authorities at the AZ production site in Seneffe and the introduction of export controls on EU-manufactured vaccines. What's happening, really, and where is this coming from?

The narrative in the media about these events has been so far surprisingly simplistic and one-sided - not just in British tabloids like The Daily Mail, but also in usually much more sober outlets like The Guardian or the BBC and in many continental newspapers. It basically says that, due to its well-known bureaucratic heaviness, the EU was late to pass contracts with vaccine suppliers, slow with approving and distributing the jabs for use in its Member States and ineffective in the whole set-up of the vaccination campaign, which is in shambles. By contrast, the UK has been much nimbler with both purchases and approvals and as a result is way ahead of continental Europe with its vaccination efforts. Faced with a shortfall in vaccine supply, the EU has been throwing its weight around and trying to bully Britain into surrendering its own stocks. 

It's fair to say that, at least for the time being, the EU is losing the narratives' war.

The actual story, however, might be considerably more complicated. 

In this post I will present an alternative interpretation, largely based on information in the public domain, but also in part on speculation since some pieces of the puzzles are still missing. The near future may shed light on these aspects.

In a nutshell, my hypothesis is that the escalation is not simply due to the EU bureaucrats having 'lost the plot', but rather provoked by the conduct of AZ and of its CEO (which has been the immediate trigger for the crisis) and by perceived foul play from the UK on a very sensitive, politically explosive issue. 

All parties have made mistakes and the situation is getting out of hand. The stakes are huge and the logic is increasingly that of a zero-sum game, which risks durably poisoning the post-Brexit relations.

Europe's anti-Roma racism (EN)

Traditionally strongest in Central Europe (plenty of nasty examples from recent history in Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Czech Republic etc.), the anti-Roma racism has rapidly spread in Western Europe since the EU enlargement. I pass on France's forced expulsion of Roma (EC Vice-president V. Reding said it all when she compared it to anti-Jewish persecutions during WW II), to focus just on the recent case in Greece that sparked a new wave of hysteria across Europe.

Greek authorities find a blonde girl ("the blond angel") in a Roma family, and suspect she may be abducted. DNA tests confirm that she is not the biological offspring of her so-called parents. While they offer a story of informal adoption, they are put in jail and much of Europe is frantically looking for the real parents ("she looks Scandinavian" is the dominant opinion). Ancestral myths of children abductions by the Roma are revived. In Ireland, a blonde girl is taken away by authorities from her Roma family, only to be returned later when DNA tests confirm that she is indeed from that family (well, yes, there are blond Roma children occasionally, as can be easily checked in many Roma communities).
The cases multiply, and note what crude racial profiling is sufficient to trigger police action:
"The police seized the girl after receiving a tip about a blonde-haired, blue-eyed child who looked nothing like her family, the Sunday World reports." 


Eventually, the biological parents of the "blond angel" found in Greece are identified in Bulgaria, and confirmed by DNA tests. They are, well, dark-skinned Roma themselves; and they confirm the informal adoption story (true, the Roma are not so good with the paperwork).

So what will happen now? Will the Greek Roma family be released from prison, with apologies and perhaps some compensation? Will they be allowed to keep the little girl whom they raised as their daughter?

My guess is different:

A wake-up call (EN)

The shocking decision to impose a 'tax' on bank depositors in Cyprus will only reveal its full consequences in the coming days and weeks. The signs so far are ominous; bank runs and social unrest in the coming period cannot be ruled out.

But whatever happens, one thing is already clear: that the North/South, Centre/Periphery cleavage in the Eurozone and in the EU at large has become irreversible, a point of no return has been reached. It is no longer taboo to force periphery governments to bypass democracy, break their promises and even their countries' law, if the powerful creditors so desire. The existence of second-class countries in the EU, for long an unspoken reality, has been officially formalised. And, with it, the end of the EU as we once knew it.

Incidentally, the measure may be as stupid as it is abusive. But even if it works, by some miracle and against the evidence of EU-imposed policies so far in its Southern rim, the harm of breaking the promise of a united Europe made of equal citizens is already done.

Out of a sense of historical justice, I would be tempted to wish that countries who are now forcing Cyprus into this legalised theft of its citizens' savings would one day live through such an experience themselves. But no, this would be wrong in any circumstance, and two wrongs don't make a right. I don't wish any citizen of any country to face a situation of being robbed outright by his or her own government. As one who lived under a totalitarian regime, I know well the feeling of frustration and disempowerment that such arbitrariness can bring, and how big a blow it can be to citizenship and basic human dignity.

For Romania, a periphery country itself and chronically treated as second-class within the EU - largely due to a corrupt, self-interested political class - this should be a last-chance wake-up call.

Leaving Romania (EN)

Just a few days ago, the OECD published the 2012 edition of its Economic Survey of the European Union. Overall interesting reading: though the European Commission was consulted and could comment on the draft version, this represents a welcome outside view of EU's current situation and challenges (as is known, Brussels has a tendency to be inward-looking and to see itself as the centre of the universe; thus, it is always good when different pertinent perspectives make their way).

One particular finding has drawn my attention, one that situates Romania as a striking outlier: emigration to the old EU members after accession. While there has been lots of converging evidence about the massive migration out of Romania in recent years - including the recent census in the country, and anecdotes about the massive presence of Romanians across Western Europe -, it is striking to see how it compares with other new members of the EU in this regard.

As per the chart above, the rate of emigration post-EU accession is more than double from Romania compared to any other country that joined the Union in 2004-2007. Compared to Poland, the other populous country among new EU members, Romania's emigration rate is four times higher, which considering that Romania's population if about half that of Poland, means that - notwithstanding the legend of the omnipresent Polish plumber - roughly twice as many Romanians as Poles have emigrated to Western Europe.

Structure vs. entropy and the EU's slow undoing (EN)

There are many possible readings of history, and one of them is to see it as a continuous struggle to create structure, in the face of the ineluctable forces of entropy.

By structure I mean macro-level order, aggregation, alignment, unification, centralization; the structure is information-rich, the system is more complex than its parts. Think music (not necessarily good music). Think discipline.
By contrast, I use the short name of entropy for the absence (or looseness) of overall organization, for atomization, divergence, fragmentation, dissipation; an entropic system is information-poor (meaning, the system as a whole can be described through simple formulas and statistical randomness), but its different parts may have more intrinsic complexity. Think noise. Think freedom.


This dichotomy is of course over-simplified, and should not be understood as a value judgment; life is made of the duality of these forces. In some cases the macro-structure may be aimed at promoting harmony and stability; but at times it can also become a straitjacket, repressive of individual liberties. And there are several possible levels of aggregation (e.g. in terms of social order: community level, national, international/regional, global) that sometime go against each other: for instance, some people advocate for strong national states and against supra-national integration. Many conspiracy theories are predicated upon the alleged drive by secretive groups (such as the Freemasonry) to control the world and impose a global macro-order.


The story of the Tower of Babel suggests that beyond a certain level God dislikes the human effort towards aggregation; or perhaps - depending on whether you are a believer or not - that there is a natural limitation to how much a structure can extend before it collapses under its own weight. History can be seen as a recurrent attempt to build castles on quicksand; there are many examples of seemingly eternal macro-structures that eventually collapsed - from the Roman Empire to the Third Reich to the Soviet Union.


The last 60 years or so have seen consistent efforts to create macro-structures at the international or supra-national level. In the bipolar world of the Cold War, both the West and the Communist bloc were aiming at the ultimate aggregation of a world order based on their respective ideologies; the United Nations tried (rather successfully) to patch a global governance regime of sorts over the East-West dichotomy while also incorporating the 'non-aligned' nations; the collapse of communism two decades ago seemed at the time to open the way for a unified international system dominated by liberal democracies, and in which regional and global integration processes would converge.

But nowadays the tide has turned.

Borders (EN)

I vividly remember the time when I needed a visa to travel to Western Europe. The endless queues at foreign consulates, the constant humiliation of being treated like a second class European, the arrogance and corruption of some consulate staff, were all powerful deterrents to anyone traveling for a legitimate purpose.
Once, as a student, I almost missed a scholarship for a summer university in Southern France, due to the impossibility to get an Italian transit visa in time. As I was traveling by train, the excruciating routine of seeking transit visas from all countries on the way, in reverse order from the destination, got stuck for good at the Italian consulate in Bucharest. Such was the chaos and total disregard for visa applicants that I spent one week at the consulate's gates with hundreds others from about 6am to afternoon every day, without even getting to submit an application (for a less than 24 hour transit visa) or to show to anyone at the consulate the letter that I had from the French embassy, requesting that my transit visas be expedited. In fact, I never got to see the building from the inside. At the last minute, I decided to change route and got instead transit visas from Austria and Germany, traveling about 1,000 kilometers more to my final destination.

***

A few years ago, I was flying from Vienna to Sarajevo for a regional conference. At that time there weren't many direct flight connections between the ex-Yugoslav countries, and to travel between neighboring countries the easiest way was often to take a transfer flight through Vienna. Thus, on the same flight there were quite a few people from other Western Balkan countries, some of whom I knew, going to the same conference. The late evening flight took off on time, but shortly thereafter the pilot noticed some technical problems and decided to return to Vienna rather than continue to Sarajevo. All passengers were disembarked and booked for an early morning flight next day; we also got vouchers for dinner and accommodation at the NH hotel at Vienna airport, literally across the street from the terminal. Everything went smoothly, but as I was checking in at the hotel, I noticed that my Western Balkan acquaintances were missing; and they did not show up by the end of the dinner when I went to sleep.
I eventually found out next morning that they had spent much of the night in the airport, not having an Austrian visa to get out of the terminal and cross the street to the airport hotel; eventually they were given a visa after a few hours, which left them just enough time to check in at the hotel, take a shower and return to the terminal for the morning flight.

***

Earlier this year, as I was flying from Vienna to Oslo on a snowy winter evening, a surprise was awaiting upon disembarkment at Oslo airport: a gentleman in uniform, standing at the gate (just standing there, not at the typical booth as there was none around) was checking travelers' passports or IDs.
To remind, both Austria and Norway are part of the border-free Schengen zone (though the latter is not an EU member); theoretically this means that there should be no control whatsoever at the border. But there it was.
To be fair, it went pretty fast, the uniformed man seemed to be doing a largely perfunctory check. Notwithstanding, my Romanian passport earned me some bonus conversation. Unlike the others, I was asked about the purpose and duration of my visit, and when I explained, it probably seemed somehow counter-intuitive to my interlocutor, so he asked me to show him some evidence, which I did. While doing this, all along in the back of my mind a nagging inner voice was telling me that I didn't have to answer those questions - as an EU national I was free to travel within the Schengen zone at will without having to provide any explanation. But I just answered them, because it seemed more expedient and I was not in the mood to look for trouble.
To give some minimum satisfaction to the nagging voice, and having already established rock-solid credentials for my less than 24-hour visit to Norway, I asked the uniformed man what was his purpose checking passports at a Schengen internal (non-)border. He seemed a little surprised by the question and told me that his was not a border control, just a police check. It just happened at the border by some coincidence.

***

Why am I telling these stories?
Well, because these personal stories (and I actually have many, many more) are illustrative of the history that we have been living in this region. The experience of traveling in Europe, as a Romanian, has changed a lot, mostly for the better, in the last 20 years - and this has coincided with historic progress in the country's European integration, culminating with accession to the EU in 2007 (perhaps more important for the common folks was the lifting of visa requirements back in 2002).
And this has pretty much been the trend as well for other Eastern European countries that gravitate towards the EU.

But this trend seems now to have stalled, or even gone into reverse gear.

Meciul autonomiei se joaca in liga a 5-a (RO)

Cine zicea despre Laszlo Tokes ca e un ungur iredentist?
Da' de unde! Poate doar se preface, pentru ca dupa apucaturi pare de-al nostru, get-beget. Mai mult ca sigur i-ar sta mai bine in Parlamentul de la Bucuresti decat in Parlamentul European.
Detaliile sunt aici.

The Reding Moment (EN)

The below video (EU Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Commissioner, Viviane Reding, making a public statement about France's treatment of Roma) deserves watching, if only for its historic importance. I don't remember having ever seen or heard a senior European Commission official using such language with regard to the government of an old, big member state like France.



It will be very interesting, and is difficult to anticipate, how the situation will develop in the coming period, in particular how the French government and other governments will react.
Below are some preliminary considerations about the signification of the moment: