Blog post

Fair vaccine access is a goal Europe cannot afford to miss – July update

European countries must do more to tackle the vaccine uptake gap. Vaccination data should be published at the maximum granularity level so researchers

Publishing date: 14 July 2021
Authors: Mario Mariniello Lionel Guetta-Jeanrenaud

This is an update to the blog published in March 2021.

In a March 2021 blog post, we looked at those countries that were ahead in the COVID-19 vaccination campaign. We observed that income inequality and the digital divide led to varying vaccination rates. Poorer individuals who lack digital skills or access to infrastructure were more likely to be at the end of the vaccine queue. We warned that Europe could replicate this tendency.
European data on local vaccination rates is scarce. However, France publishes daily vaccination rates at the level of the département, and Sweden and Belgium publish data at the more granular ’commune’ level. The evidence, summarised in our charts, suggests extremely strong links between income and vaccination rates within those countries’ largest cities.
Public authorities must pursue fair vaccine distribution actively. Measures targeted at the poorer segments of society, including communication and engagement campaigns, are necessary to ensure balanced uptake of vaccination. The available data for Europe confirms our worries: implemented measures in the parts of Europe for which there is data have not been sufficient to address the vaccine uptake gap.
Different levels of vaccine uptake have broad implications: those segments of society already hit hard by the pandemic are unduly penalised; economic reopening is held back; the legitimacy of vaccine passports is undermined.
We reiterate our call for European countries to do more to tackle the vaccine uptake gap. Vaccination data should be published at the maximum granularity level so researchers and local decision-makers can monitor progress.

About the authors

Mario Mariniello

Mario Mariniello is a Non-resident fellow at Bruegel since September 2024. He is Visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Natolin, Poland, and formerly taught at the University of Namur, the Université Libre de Bruxelles, and the University of Florence. He is the author of "Digital Economic Policy", Oxford University Press 2022.

His main interests are the economics of digital markets, competition policy and the impact of technology in labour markets.

Mario was previously a Senior Fellow at Bruegel, where he launched and led the “Future of Work and Inclusive Growth” project. He also previously led Bruegel's digital and competition policy research agenda.

He was Digital Adviser at the European Political Strategy Centre (EPSC), a European Commission in-house think-tank that operated under the authority of the former Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, a member of the Chief Economist Team at DG Competition (the Commission’s antitrust department), and worked on the use of AI in workplaces at the Commission’s DG Employment.

Mario holds a Ph.D. in Industrial Organization from the European University Institute (Florence) and a M.Sc. in Economics from CORIPE (Turin). He is currently pursuing a bachelor degree in Philosophy at KU Leuven.
Lionel Guetta-Jeanrenaud

Lionel worked at Bruegel as a Research Assistant until August 2022. He studied economics at the Ecole normale supérieure de Lyon, in France. Before joining Bruegel, Lionel worked as a research assistant at the Department of Economics of Harvard University.

His Master’s thesis investigated the impact of newspaper closures on anti-government sentiment in the United States. In addition to media economics and political economy, his research interests include fiscal policy and the digital economy.

Lionel is a dual French and American citizen.