Covid: What’s happening to the EU vaccine scheme?

The European Union has been criticised for the slow pace of coronavirus vaccinations in member states.

It has introduced export controls on vaccines produced in the EU after the roll-out was hit by delays and supply problems.

The scheme, set up in June 2020, allows the EU to negotiate the purchase of vaccines on behalf of its member states. It says this can help reduce costs and avoid competition between them.

Member states do not have to join the scheme, but all 27 EU countries chose to do so.

EU countries are still allowed to make separate deals with vaccine makers which are not negotiating with the EU. Hungary has agreed to buy two million doses of the Russian Sputnik-V vaccine.

The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was approved for use in the EU on 29 January.

The EU signed a deal for 300 million doses in August, while the UK ordered 100 million doses and signed its deal in May.

But supply problems have been announced by AstraZeneca, which blamed manufacturing problems on one plant in Belgium and another in the Netherlands.

This prompted criticism from the EU when it learned it would receive fewer doses. It says it should not receive fewer doses just because the UK signed a contract earlier and said AstraZeneca's UK plants "had to deliver".

Officials have not confirmed publicly how big the shortfall will be. But an unnamed EU official told Reuters news agency deliveries would be reduced to 31 million - a cut of 60% - in the first quarter of 2021.

AstraZeneca said the fact that EU contracts were signed later left less time to resolve production problems. It said the UK had signed contracts three months earlier, giving more time to fix problems.

It said its agreement with the EU allowed the option of supplying Europe from UK sites, but only once the UK had sufficient supplies. "As soon as we can, we'll help the EU," chief executive Pascal Soriot said.

UK government minister Michael Gove said there would be "no interruption" to UK supplies, which had been "planned, paid for and scheduled".

Because of the supply problems, the EU announced on 29 January that it was introducing export controls on vaccines made in the bloc.

It will apply these to vaccines moving between the Republic of Ireland (which is in the EU) and Northern Ireland. This involves overriding part of the Brexit deal for Northern Ireland.

The EU previously placed export controls on personal protective equipment, to make sure member states had enough.

The EU approved the purchase of 300 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in December. But it was unable to supply the 12.5 million vaccines it had promised by the end of 2020.

The head of BioNTech, Uğur Şahin, said the delay was because the EU wrongly assumed several different vaccines would be ready at once and therefore spread its orders. He said the company was ramping up manufacturing capacity.

Other countries that have so far been more successful in vaccinating their populations approved the Moderna or Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine as well.

The EU has now approved the Moderna jab and is doubling its order of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to 600m doses.

But vaccinations in parts of Europe were paused after Pfizer temporarily cut deliveries, to increase capacity at its processing plant in Belgium.

French pharmaceutical company Sanofi has announced it will help manufacture 125 million doses of the vaccine for the EU, starting this summer.

There are supply problems with the Moderna vaccine too. Italy said it would receive 20% fewer doses in the week starting on 7 February. France also said it expected to receive 25% fewer doses of the vaccine.

In Germany, where 2.2 million people had been vaccinated by 28 January, the government has been criticised for lagging behind other countries, despite BioNTech being a German company.

In France, the number of people who have received the jab is just over a million.

Italy has administered 1.7 million doses of vaccine so far and Spain 1.4 million doses.

The UK - by contrast - has vaccinated more than 7 million people.

The European Commission says it has reached agreements with five other pharmaceutical companies to purchase hundreds of millions of vaccines, once they pass clinical trials:

The Commission concluded initial talks with another company, Novavax, for up to 200 million doses.

A European Commission spokesperson told BBC News the strategy of ordering vaccines from several suppliers was "fundamentally sound" and could "ensure almost two billion doses for European citizens".

After the UK approved the Pfizer vaccine in November (nearly three weeks before the EU regulators), some argued that it was only able to move this quickly because of Brexit.

Reality Check looked into this claim and found that the UK's approval of the jab was actually permitted under EU law - a point made by the head of the UK medicines regulator.

The government said that being outside the EU did allow it to be more nimble in this area.

So, what about the EU vaccine scheme?

The UK could have joined it last year, while it was still in a transition phase with the EU (and following its rules), but it chose not to.

If it had, the UK might not have been able to do as many deals with vaccine companies.

The terms of EU scheme state that participating countries must, "agree not to launch their own procedures for advance purchase of [a] vaccine with the same manufacturers", that the EU signs a contract with.

However, the German government - a participant - signed its own side deal with Pfizer for 30 million extra doses in September.

In January, the European Commission refused to say whether this had broken the terms of the EU scheme.