Ms Emily O'Reilly:

The Commission proposes and the member states dispose. That is it. The Commission does not make the decisions, it is the member states that decide. If we look at the various ways in which the vaccines have been rolled out, I am in France, which was a bit reluctant about AstraZeneca from the start, and when particular issues emerged, one minute it was giving AstraZeneca only to those aged over 60 and the next minute it was giving AstraZeneca to those aged under 60. Those figures are not quite right but France changed its decision-making on who should get it very quickly and completely. It did a 180° turn. That was not the Commission, it was France making up its own mind. There was a very interesting long article in Le Mondeyesterday about President Macron's attitude to vaccination generally. Initially, he was of the view that no vaccine would come on track until the end of this month, so he devised his policies around this.

He is under pressure now in relation to lockdowns and so on. The point I am making is that, for all that Brussels proposes and negotiates certain things, ultimately it is the member states who are proposing them. The way the pandemic has been handled and the vaccine has been rolled out is completely different in every member state. I was talking to an MEP from Malta the other day and asking how things were among that small population and he told me they took an aggressive approach – "aggressive approach" was the term he used - at the beginning. I think they now have one of the highest levels of vaccine take-up. It will be a while.

We hear anecdotally about France, which has a fantastic health system and so on. If I wander around Strasbourg, on virtually ever other street corner there is a place I can go in, get a free Covid test and get the result within 12 hours. They do certain things well, so I expected the roll-out of the vaccine to be at a similar level to the UK but it has not been. There are all sorts of cultural and political issues relating to that. That is the point I make about blaming Brussels. It is the individual decisions made by the member states that to a large extent - we can argue about that and we will find out empirically what that is - have dictated the play in each member state.