EU Covid incompetence leaves governments wanting vaccines, not excuses | Larry Elliott

Centralised approach was meant to underline Europe's solidarity but has had opposite effect

The EU has made an almighty hash of procuring treatments for Covid-19. Vaccine centres are running short of supplies as a result. National governments want jabs rather than excuses for what has gone wrong. The search for scapegoats is on.

Stripped of the legal wrangling between Brussels and AstraZeneca, the protectionist plan to ban exports of drugs and the now-abandoned plan to close the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, the EU has been incompetent - and no amount of bully-boy tactics can get away from that fact.

Related: How EU's floundering vaccine effort hit a fresh crisis with exports row

But what really mattered was not price but speed and breadth of supply