The failure of the EU’s vaccine is because it didn’t “shoot at the stars,” Macron says

PARIS (Reuters) – European leaders did not see that COVID-19 vaccines would be developed once they were, and so the rollout in the EU has now lagged behind some other countries, French President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview released Wednesday. broadcast.

“Everyone, all the experts said, never in the history of mankind has a vaccine been developed in less than a year,” Macron told Greek television channel ERT.

“We didn’t shoot the stars. That should be a lesson for all of us. We were wrong to miss ambition, to miss the madness, I would say, to say it’s possible, let’s do it, ” Macron said, in a rare admission of failure in the pandemic.

The leaders of the European Union are struggling to speed up vaccinations, countries like Great Britain and the United States are following behind and are facing delays in supply.

Macron himself has been criticized at home for a faltering rollout delayed by bureaucracy and public mistrust of vaccines.

“We didn’t think it was going to happen that soon … You can give that to the Americans, as early as the summer of 2020 they said, let’s pull out all the stops and do it,” Macron said.

“As far as we are concerned, we did not go into this fast enough, strong enough. We thought it would take a while for the vaccines to kick in. “

The EU tightened its controls on exports of coronavirus vaccines on Wednesday, leaving more room to block shipments to countries with higher vaccination rates, such as Great Britain, or that do not share the doses they produce.