Leaders of Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Latvia and Slovenia have sent a letter to the heads of the European Commission and Council, calling for a discussion of disparities in the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccines, according to the letter circulated by media.
On Friday, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz voiced his concern that some EU countries may have inked “secret contracts” with vaccine manufacturers to receive extra doses. On the same day, Kurz and his four counterparts sent the letter to European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel, claiming that “deliveries of vaccine doses by pharma companies to individual EU member states are not being implemented on an equal basis.”
“If this system were to carry on, it would continue creating and exacerbating huge disparities among member states by this summer, whereby some would be able to reach herd immunity in a few weeks while others would lag far behind,” the letter published on Saturday read.
The five leaders then called for an immediate discussion on the matter.
Kurz on Friday addressed the issue of the so-called bazaars where some member states made additional agreements with vaccine companies, which according to Brussels, was up to the member states to “ask less or more of a given vaccine.”
According to the Austrian chancellor, Malta, for example, should receive three times more doses of vaccines by June than Bulgaria based on the per capita estimates.
