With mounting pressure on EU officials to ramp up vaccinations across the 27-member bloc, the European Commission took the drastic step last week of introducing export controls on vaccines made in EU factories.
In the same breath, the Commission also announced it would invoke an emergency measure in the Northern Ireland Protocol, the agreement that allows for the free flow of goods on the island of Ireland post-Brexit. The move was seen as a bid to ensure that British-Swedish firm AstraZeneca would not send unauthorized vaccine shipments to the U.K. through Northern Ireland.
