EU on N Ireland 'mistake': only the pope is infallible

The European Union is seeking to prop up the credibility of its flagging coronavirus vaccination program that has been beleaguered by anyone from World Health Organization and EU member states to the United Kingdom.Ten days of bad news about stalled deliveries from producers, rusty rollout by member states was capped last weekend when the EU had to make an unlikely U-turn on plans to set up controls on the island of Ireland between the United Kingdom's Northern and the EU's Republic of Ireland to make sure vaccines would not be illegally transported to Britain.

Considering that keeping the border invisible to keep peace on the island was a key tenet of the Brexit EU-UK divorce agreement, that plan was aborted just before it became a firm decision, yet it left the EU's executive Commission with plenty of diplomatic egg on its face.Britain's popular media had a feast to depict the EU as untrustworthy even if the government kept a low profile on the issue.

"These are things which happen when you are working at full speed to deal with a developing situation," said EU Commission spokesman Eric Mamer.

In my country we have a saying 'only the pope is infallible'...the important thing is that you recognize them early on - in this case so early that it was before the decision was finalized,he said.Overall though, the Commission stood by its plans to check on exports produced on its territory and make sure they were syphoned off somewhere else if the EU contract with producers stipulated that they should be used in the EU.

The World Health Organization criticized the new EU export rules as "not helpful."The EU has been forced into such measures because the rollout of vaccines to its 27 member states is lagging way behind nations like Israel and the United Kingdom and also behind its own rollout plans.The EU as an institution has a massive stake in the success of the operation since  it is a prime example to show its relevance on a continent where it is all too often the center of criticism.