Coronavirus (COVID-19) Health
Reports
Thomas Wright
Director - Center on the United States and Europe
Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Project on International Order and Strategy
After the submarines, I think Europeans really needed to have some proof that something was going well [... With world leaders gathering for the United Nations General Assembly, and with the fallout over the submarine deal still ongoing] there was a need to just lift this irritant. [...] It’s definitely not enough, but it’s a good first step in acknowledging at least that your partners deserve a minimum of respect. One less irritant cannot be a bad thing.
It’s basically impossible to have a proper investigation [into the origins of COVID-19] if one of the main parties doesn’t want to cooperate. We need to proceed as if both hypotheses are true.
It's easy to criticise the EU because it spends little and late or because it spends too much. Reality is much more complicated, and perhaps it is correct to give priority to access to vaccines rather than costs given the pace at which the Delta variant is spreading.
