Germany

Munich has had enough of the vaccine chaos in Berlin and Brussels. In a surprise announcement on Wednesday, Bavaria’s minister president Markus Söder stated that he would sign a preliminary purchase agreement for the Russian Sputnik vaccine. The leader of the Bavarian Free State explained that he would pre-order two and a half million doses of Sputnik V in the hope of receiving these by July. Söder, who is a potential candidate to replace Merkel, was keen to stress that this was dependent on regulatory approval by the European Medicines Agency.

During her 16 years in office, Angela Merkel has produced a couple of memorable sentences that will be imprinted into her legacy. She added a few more on Wednesday, when she announced that the government rescinds plans of a radical Easter shutdown, saying: ‘This mistake is my mistake alone.’ Merkel’s CDU is rapidly losing the support of voters — their approval rating has dropped 9 per cent to just 26 within a week It is quite remarkable to see a leader taking the full blame for what has been perceived as a hasty and impetuous decision. Merkel and Germany’s 16 state premiers had agreed on a radical lockdown over the Easter holidays in yet another attempt to curb the rise of coronavirus infections.

The BMWs and Mercs will be banned from the autobahns. People will only have electricity when there is enough of a breeze to keep the windmills turning. And the factories will be on a three-day week, while the airports will be converted into organic farms. Most businesses, and of course conservatives of any sort, will be nervous at the increasingly likely prospect of the Greens taking charge in Berlin later this year. But they shouldn't be. In fact, they would be a huge improvement on Angela Merkel’s chaotic twilight years. As she heads towards retirements, Merkel’s legacy is looking very tarnished. The CDU is slumping in the polls. It has made a mess of Covid-19, imposing a botched vaccine procurement programme on the whole of Europe that has come badly unstuck.

On Sunday, Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) suffered a historic election defeat in their former heartlands of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate. ‘The state elections struck deep at the heart of the union of the CDU and CSU,’ said Markus Söder, leader of the CDU’s Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union. To an increasingly frustrated public, the ruling parties in the capital look tired and devoid of ideas. There is no incentive for Merkel and her cabinet to turn things around. After 16 years in government and on the brink of retirement, she has become a lame-duck chancellor. Some German journalists have even begun to call the whole sorry saga ‘the duck tales’.

Young, polished and confident, Germany’s health minister became the country’s most popular politician in 2020. A darling of the conservative right, Jens Spahn, was even tipped as a candidate to succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor. At the peak of his popularity last November, surveys indicated approval from nearly two-thirds of all Germans. He seemed to reflect the success story that was Germany’s handling of the pandemic, the personification of friendly German efficiency. Fast forward to last week, and you find a defensive Spahn facing a hostile one-hour long grilling in parliament. His arms crossed and his jaw set, the 40-year-old was visibly tense as he braced himself for questions from angry MPs.

Germany’s fridges are filled with Oxford jabs. But there's a problem: 80 per cent of the 735,000 doses delivered to Germany so far have not been used. The vaccine is being described in the German press as a 'shelf warmer'. There are even reports of people missing appointments at vaccination centres if they have been notified that they will receive the AstraZeneca product. While this is alarming, a lukewarm reaction to the vaccine might not come as a surprise. The vaccine's reputation has been repeatedly undermined by reports about its efficacy. A decision in Germany not to use the vaccine for over-65-year-olds, despite the European Medicines Agency having approved it to be given to all adults, has hardly helped.

Germans are increasingly losing faith in the European Union due to its bungled handling of the vaccine roll-out. Germany and the other member states have assigned Brussels to organise and oversee the procurement and distribution of Covid jabs. But, so far, the roll-out has been a logistic mess. According to a poll by Civey, commissioned by the German newspaper Der Spiegel, more than 60 per cent of German citizens said their view of Brussels had worsened in light of the disastrous vaccination management. Almost 70 per cent laid the blame at the feet of fellow German Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, who admitted last week that ‘mistakes were made’ in the bloc’s approach to the procurement of jabs.

Two months ago, a Russian pipe-laying ship called the Akademik Cherskiy left the Baltic island of Rügen to finish the last few miles of the most controversial gas pipeline in the world. Germany hopes that Nord Stream 2 will improve its access to Russia’s vast reserves of natural gas. In America, however, the project is seen as a way for Moscow to exert influence over Europe. Its completion marks the biggest diplomatic crisis in transatlantic relations since the Iraq War and now, as then, we see Germany pitched against the US. But this time, Germany is far more determined. Since its inception, the pipeline —which runs directly from Russia to Germany — has been opposed by many in Europe who share America’s concerns about dependency on Russian energy.

After the EU’s vaccine distribution disaster, German lawmakers are now taking a closer look at Russia’s Sputnik V jab. If approved by EU regulators, Sputnik V could be the fourth vaccine available in the bloc after the BioNTech-Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines. It’s easy to see why Germany could be tempted by the Sputnik V vaccine. The rollout of the BioNTech-Pfizer and Moderna jabs has been hampered by delivery delays and political blunders. And European regulators have remained wary of AstraZeneca’s vaccine – a scepticism that was solidified by a recent trial showing that the shot may not significantly reduce the risk of mild or moderate disease caused by the 501Y.V2 variant, also known as the South African strain.

Germany’s vaccine committee has advised the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine only be given to under-65s. The announcement marks a major twist in a week of muddled vaccine reports. On Tuesday, the German newspaper Handelsblatt suggested that German officials believed the Oxford vaccine was only 8 per cent effective for the over-65 groups (no evidence has been produced to support the 8 per cent claim). It has been heavily and extensively rebuffed by both AstraZeneca and the German government. Yet the German reporter who broke the story doubled down on the claims, raising the stakes as to whether he was making precarious reporting worse, or whether the European Medicines Agency may indeed conclude that the vaccine's efficacy is too low.