You might be thinking of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide_scandal

The name of the drug was "Contergan" in german which german-speaking readers might recognize more easily.

Or Primodos (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primodos). Or Sodium Valproate (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-39657139). These cases really undermine my confidence in the system.

Be aware of availability bias here. If a medication did not make it into the news because of problems, we are a lot less likely to have ever heard of it.

Agreed. But in the case of Primodos, there were cover-ups with government involvement for decades. The end result was that Matt Hancock apologized. That was it. No holding to account. No fixing the system so it wouldn't happen again. That's what undermines my confidence in the system.

That's Thalidomide which wasn't a vaccine.

A more relevant example is Pandemrix, a flu vaccine launched in the EU in 2009. A year later it was discovered that it seems to increase the risk of narcolepsy in teenagers sixfold. The vaccine was produced and licensed in an expedited fashion because of a "pandemic" (of swine flu), which used a then-new and slightly experimental technique (adjuvants) which interestingly, German doctors flagged up as a risk and suggested the German government use a different H1N1 vaccine that was less experimental.