https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-roll-out.html

Speaking to France Inter, Mr Barnier said: 'I recognise that there were administrative problems, bureaucracy [within the EU].

'There was an almost ideological mistrust of public-private partnerships. We don’t know how to take risks.

'The British took risks by financing the private sector. The Americans took risks. We don’t know how to do that yet.'

He added that 'lessons' should be learned from the current crisis, including whether countries could be given more powers to act independently of Brussels in the future because independent nations are capable of moving quicker than blocs.

But he continued to insist that signing vaccine contracts outside the EU would have been a bad idea, because it would have meant smaller countries getting left behind.

'That is not, in my view, the philosophy of the EU,' he added.