My understanding is that the rich countries like France were willing to do a deal on day 1, but the commission stepped in to negotiate for everyone
Having all countries in the EU in the same boat when it comes to vaccines seems like a good thing to me. Now we have this spat between the EU and UK, but if every nation in the EU negotiated by themselves we might have a conflict between EU countries themselves... That's not to say the EU didn't screw up along the way.
Meanwhile in France, I can do a RT-PCR test paid by the state (around 50$ AFAIK) every other day with no question asked.