High risk/high gain: Soft “unpolitics” in joint vaccine procurement

This paper examines the prevalence of “unpolitics” among populist EU governments in the centralisation of anti-covid vaccine procurement. The cost-benefit calculation for populists to engage in “unpolitics” is ambiguous. On the one hand, not getting timely access to effective vaccines or discouraging the population from vaccination poses an immediate risk for public health and economic recovery (lockdowns). On the other hand, the issue is salient, relatively easy to grasp, and therefore a good opportunity for politicisation within established populist scripts. Empirically, this ambiguity manifested in a lack of open obstruction tactics and decisional stalemate. Instead, populist governments resorted to conventional blame-shifting, eurosceptic narratives and opportunistic behaviour. Rather than being plagued by non-decision, the EU procurement process was set up in record time, despite some shortcomings in its implementation. Nevertheless, Hungary and Slovakia broke informal EU norms (although not EU law) by authorising Russian and Chinese vaccines not approved by the European Medicines Agency as part of a broader nationalist and eurosceptic campaign. During the implementation of the joint procurement scheme, Austria and other governments moreover adopted maximalist bargaining tactics to extort additional vaccine doses against the agreed-upon distribution key. These tactics largely targeted the domestic audience to deflect from mistakes the government had made when placing its vaccine orders and played on common eurosceptic tropes. Overall, joint vaccine procurement saw little “unpolitics”, but all “unpolitical” activities were undertaken by populist governments.