France’s famous Pasteur Institute has announced that it is discontinuing development of its Covid vaccine. The news came yesterday, around the same time as the EU began to threaten pharmaceutical companies that they would be subject to export controls. The Institute released a statement describing disappointing results from its Phase 1 clinical trials, which began in August:

“In these first human trials, the prospective vaccine was well tolerated but produced immune responses that were inferior to those observed in people who had recovered naturally and to those observed in the authorised vaccines”

The French haven’t been able to produce a vaccine, and the Germans couldn’t do it without American corporate help. No wonder voices in the EU were so keen to hit out, falsely, at the success of Brexit Britain’s Oxford vaccine. Poor Little EU.