European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s State of the Union Address on Wednesday included a list of the accomplishments of the European Union under her leadership, including this pearl (expressed in the characteristically unidiomatic English of European officialdom): “We have set the building blocks for a Health Union, helping to vaccinate an entire continent – and large parts of the world.” (For video of the speech, see here; for text, here.)
No mention of the fact that the EU vaccinated the European continent for the most part with a vaccine – that of the German company BioNTech and its American partner Pfizer – whose safety and efficacy were unknown per the very terms of the contract which the Commission signed with the companies on behalf of all EU member states, as can be seen below.
