Valdis Dombrovskis is being made a scapegoat

Roberts Zīle, Member of the European Parliament, on Twitter: Today, the President (who has found someone to blame for her failures in any of her posts (see Spiegel)) has also managed to find the scapegoat for the EU-wide vaccine fiasco - her right hand - Valdis Dombrovskis. No comments.

Latvia is not the only place where the vaccination process is going tough. The vaccination process is slow and chaotic throughout the European Union. As of 1 February, only 2.8% of the EU population had been vaccinated, compared with 14.2% in the United Kingdom and 9.7% in the United States. It is not even worth talking about Latvia's less-than-one-percent of vaccinees.

As usual in such times, officials try to distance themselves from their failures and find a scapegoat to blame for them. It seems as if the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, should take responsibility for the slow pace of vaccination, but she has found a scapegoat, her Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis, who is responsible for trade and exports. The idea is simple: Dombrovskis allegedly had to ensure that EU vaccine manufacturers first meet demand within the EU and only then export their products to other countries. The fact that Dombrovskis does not determine the EU's export regulations does not matter. It is possible that von der Leyen thinks that Dombrovskis should "make a deal" with pharmaceutical companies - first us, then everyone else. This may be a common practice for German politicians, but Dombrovskis is famous for his strict adherence to the letter of the law and regulations, which has brought him success so far.

In the present case, this accusation of Dombrovskis can be seen as particularly humiliating, as the accusations were not made by von der Leyen herself, whose high political status would allow such action, but by her chief spokesperson Eric Mamer, who is much lower in rank than Dombrovskis.

At the same time, it is clear that Mamer would hardly have said anything about the Vice-President of the EC without direct instructions from his boss. To be honest, Mamer didn't seem to say anything dramatic. He only pointed out that the responsibility for vaccination failures lies with one EU body - Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis.

The EU's political culture is so emphatically "polite" that "slighting" colleagues working in the same team is very bad. It's like the players on the field started blaming their goalkeeper for the loss. Even if such "slights" take place, they are particularly vague and fuzzy, so that the accuser can, if necessary, take a step back and say that "was not what he meant" and that he was "misunderstood". This time, Dombrovskis "got an earful" concretely and unequivocally. Apparently, Brussels feels that the vaccine crisis may also lead to a kind of political crisis, and therefore a potential scapegoat must be identified immediately, upon which the outrage over the total failure of the work can be diverted.

At the end of November, von der Leyen was proud to say that the EU had signed various agreements with vaccine manufacturers. This means that Europeans will have access to the best achievements of the pharmaceutical industry and the most promising coronavirus vaccines of the future. When news appeared in December that vaccination in the EU would begin soon after Christmas, von der Leyen tweeted with pathos: "It's Europe's moment." After the vaccination had begun, she wrote about a "touching moment of unity" and a "European success story".

No one is talking about the "European success story" in Brussels anymore. Von der Leyen has also become much quieter, as the "success story" may prove to be the biggest stumbling block in her political career. While Israel, the United States and the United Kingdom are rapidly increasing vaccination rates, Europe is experiencing severe disappointment. Until recently, politicians promised to provide as many vaccines as needed, and then a little more, but now the whole vaccination process is clearly slowing down. US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech have informed Brussels that they will deliver far fewer vaccines than planned in the near future. AstraZeneca, on the other hand, has announced that it will deliver only 31 million doses of the vaccine by the end of March, instead of the 80 million mentioned earlier.

According to Spiegel, Europe, one of the richest regions in the world, is proving incapable of protecting its citizens from a dangerous disease, while vaccination rates elsewhere show that this is possible. It is clear that this failure of the EU is causing people frustration and anger. For most of January, von der Leyen avoided commenting on vaccination issues, and her communications department ignored press requests. When she had to answer a direct question at the World Economic Forum in Davos, she blamed the pharmaceutical companies for the current problems. They are to blame, not us. Not me.

According to Spiegel, this is a pattern of behavior that pervades von der Leyen's career. It is clear that the weight of her status is incomparable to Dombrovskis' "weight", so if Dombrovskis is indeed chosen as the sacrificial scapegoat, then his condition is not enviable.