When the lack of PPE became apparent the UK went out and worked to fill the gap way sooner than the EU did. Ditto vaccine stocks - that and the chaos in the EU over vaccines at the time was why Ursula von der Leyen made her vindictive attempt to use intra-Ireland border controls to prevent the UK stocking up on vaccines, till her own advisers warned her off doing so. She knew how those UK initiatives made the EU look, but her proposed remedy proved more harmful than its target.
The care home fiasco, the lack of quarantine controls and the effects of both were widely replicated elsewhere - the UK's was far from the only government to bet the farm initially on a herd immunity strategy. I suspect the same is true of contractual and financial skullduggery since, though it's theoretically possible that the EU was lilywhite about such things, its own auditors have been unable to sign its accounts off for the thick end of three decades.
The care home fiasco, the lack of quarantine controls and the effects of both were widely replicated elsewhere - the UK's was far from the only government to bet the farm initially on a herd immunity strategy. I suspect the same is true of contractual and financial skullduggery since, though it's theoretically possible that the EU was lilywhite about such things, its own auditors have been unable to sign its accounts off for the thick end of three decades.
