Bart De Wever’s concerns about the vaccination strategy

“The cost of keeping your society locked up is many times higher than the millions you would allegedly overpay by ordering too much.” N-VA Chairman Bart De Wever wondered on the TV programme Terzake whether enough vaccines would be delivered in time. He referred to stories in the German press that Europe ordered too few vaccines and ordered them too late because of French interests. “The question is when we will have the vaccines. If we are still vaccinating next year because of the delivery date while other countries, such as the United Kingdom and Israel, are vaccinating much faster, the population will be very angry about that. Because the resumption of life depends on the pace of the vaccinations.”

Making a choice: Flemish or Belgian

Bart De Wever was clear about the institutional tangle that is Belgium, and that makes the entire vaccination strategy even more complex. “A choice must be made. Either you have everything at the Flemish level, that is my choice, or you go towards a Belgicist choice. We have already tried that latter option throughout the twentieth century, and it does not work. I can’t imagine that anyone today still thinks we should not choose between one of those two levels.”