Is that screwing someone or just naivety/incompetence from the EU? Why on earth did they think Trump would play fair?

It might be both. The UK and the US clearly screwed us. Still I find that the EU was really naive here, hopefully Von der Leyen will learn from this.

Countries do not have friends, only interests.

The first duty of a nation is to its people.

The moment that politicians forget that is the moment they find themselves in predicaments like this.

I'm guessing they thought Biden would play fair.

But there was no guarantee that Biden would win the election then.

It's their naïvety / arrogance

> free market and good faith

That's incompatible.

I could see them making a good faith assumption. Free market assumption is basically, everyone is out to earn most money they can.

The EU is not naive.

The list of bad decisions goes on and on. Face masks, open borders, vaccine development, suspension of AZ vaccine, etc. This is bad management and probably dangerous political games.

Now, the UK did not do much better but at least they did manage to develop a vaccine (which is sold at cost) and to understand that vaccination had to happen early and as fast as possible and they went all in (800k+ injections just yesterday).

The EU itself doesn't manage the reaction to the pandemic, it's up to each country. And as you can see European countries reacted differently and have vastly different results.

The EU has been put in charge of vaccine procurement and there is a lot of coordination between countries.

When I say "the EU" it means as much the EU as an institution as it means most member states individually.

The distinction matters depending on the point being discussed, otherwise the comparison with the UK (or the US) doesn't make that much sense.