The Belgian prime minister had reminded Boris Johnson that the UK’s Covid-19 vaccine was actually “Made in Europe”.
Alexander De Croo trolled Johnson after he tweeted his thanks “to our NHS, to all of the scientists who worked so hard to develop this vaccine, to all the volunteers” as the UK began its roll-out of the the Pfizer/BioNTech jab.
A large part of the vaccine was produced in Belgium.
Made in Europe 🇪🇺 https://t.co/jQopbynrZk
— Alexander De Croo (@alexanderdecroo) December 8, 2020
De Croo’s dig comes days after Germany’s health minister reminded Matt Hancock that the vaccine was an “EU product”.
Jens Spahn’s remark came after the health secretary made claims that UK officials fast-tracked vaccine thanks to Brexit.
Spahn said the claims had been ‘misplaced’ as he reminded Westminster politicians that the treatment had been partly developed by a German biotech start-up, BioNTech.
MORE: Matt Hancock ignores experts to repeat claim British fast-tracked Covid vaccine due to Brexit
Shooting down assertions the UK had new powers since leaving the EU to force through an approval, he said: “We have member states, including Germany, who could have issued such an emergency authorisation if we’d wanted to but we decided against this and what we opted for was a common European approach to move forward together.”
Hancock was also rebuked by the head of Britain’s medicines regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, who said the process has been undertaken under the terms of European law, which remains in force until the end of Brexit transition period on December 31.
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