Judgment The court in Brussels ordering Poland to pay over PLN 5.6 billion and receive tens of millions of vaccines against COVID-19 is more than just a legal dispute with the pharmaceutical company. This is simply a bill for the absurd policy of the Government of the Law and Justices conducted during the pandemic – a bill that will be paid by all Polish taxpayers.
Poland is to pay Pfizer almost PLN 6 billion for vaccines of Morawiecki. The case concerns a contract concluded in 2021, under which the Warsaw Government ordered immense amounts of preparations. The problem is that already a year later the state had millions of unused doses and decided not to accept further deliveries. The court concluded that there were no grounds for unilateral withdrawal of the contract – and present the consequences of this decision are brutally specific: billions of PLN to be paid and the work to receive further vaccines that may prove unnecessary.
There's no way out of a liability question. The government of Mateusz Morawiecki made decisions in the atmosphere of covid conspiracy theories about the imminent mass extinction of the population, but the scale of commitments besides indicates the deficiency of simple caution, reason and dignity of man in the ruling team. Ordering tens of millions of doses beyond the real needs of the country is barely considered to be a rational management of public funds. Rather, it is an example of an administration acting impulsively, without any long-term calculation.
The social context of these decisions is even more controversial. In addition to scaring women and the dramatic decline in fertility, during the pandemic Poles were subject to many restrictions: forests were closed, cemeteries were restricted, church limits were introduced, and the wellness strategy functioned in a permanent crisis mode. At the same time, wards were closed and hospitals were converted, frequently at the expense of patients with another diseases. This led to over 250,000 excess deaths of people who could not number on appropriate and timely diagnosis and treatment.
The communicative of the power at the time besides raised doubts. On the 1 hand, the Morawiecki and Sunday government threatened society with successive waves of infections, on the another hand, at the crucial minute of the 2020 election campaign, the Prime Minister announced that "the virus is in retreat". This communication inconsistencies undermined citizens' assurance and suggested that pandemic policy was subject to any inactive unknown political interests, not just wellness reasons.
Today, the effects of these decisions materialize in the most measurable way – in public finances. Over PLN 5 billion is an amount that could be allocated to the real needs of the wellness system, which has already faced financial shortcomings. Instead, money will go to a global corp as a consequence of a badly ordered contract.
The Pfizer vs. Poland case shows something else: the state cannot act as an entity that first makes decisions under the influence of emotion or force and then tries to retreat from them without consequences. In global relations there are hard rules – and their disregard ends with specified judgments.
It's not just a pandemic story. It is simply a communicative about the quality of governance and behind the scenes – about how the deficiency of responsibility, excessive spending and decision-making chaos can translate into billions of losses. Unfortunately, the final bill always goes to the citizens, though it should be repaid by members of the then authorities.
