Coronavirus: will more stick and less carrot strategy spur Europe’s vaccinations?

In Athens, a Covid-19 vaccine will help get you into a bar. In Prague, it might win you an iPhone. But in some places, you’ll need it to keep your job.

As governments across Europe push to get everyday life back to normal, the carrot-and-stick approach to inoculations is shifting more to the latter. In France, President Emmanuel Macron pledged a “summer of mobilising for vaccinations,” with compulsory shots for health care workers. Italy, Greece and the UK are going down the same road, moving toward making vaccinations a requirement for some.

After months of strife earlier this year over a limited supply of vaccines, European Union leaders now face the opposite problem: plenty of doses, and signs of a slowdown in demand to get them.

With the contagious Delta variant spreading rapidly, some leaders see a need for tough steps to get past a pandemic that’s killed more than four million people worldwide, and financially and psychologically devastated many more. Others say that forcing people to get shots could backfire and break down public confidence in the inoculation drive.