Quote:
Originally Posted by jonbxx
That's a good question - was the EU joint procurement scheme mandatory for EU states for vaccines? I have seen evidence that the PPE joint procurement wasn't (Denmark, Bulgaria, France, Lithuania, Portugal and Finland opted out link)
Don't get me wrong, I reaffirm that the Joint Procurement Schemes are not a nimble tool and not suitable for emergency use, I am just curious, once everything has settled, where the mud will stick
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Ah, here we go, member states signed up to the vaccine JPA in June 2020 at a meeting of the European Council (heads of state) - https://ec.europa.eu/commission/pres...en/QANDA_21_48 |
In some ways, asking whether it’s mandatory is to misunderstand the way the EU works. It wasn’t mandatory, it was entirely outside of the EU’s competence and certain member states were already well advanced with their own plans. But everyone fell into line anyway. There is enormous peer pressure at the European Council (the forum for heads of government). They tend to negotiate into the small hours and achieve a consensus, with any individual isolated prime minister normally falling into line rather than risking the loss of good will that comes from using a veto. The actual use of one is rare. In this case there was no veto as it was a voluntary scheme but nevertheless the pressure to take part will have been significant.