Comment by angry_octet

The opposite -- I believe that the EU authorities acted unethically in covering their own asses, and this devalues their past & future statements.

Russia and China effectively approved vaccines with only phase II trial data. China didn't even have active cases (officially) and they vaccinated tens of millions of people with it, their own, Africans and Brazilians etc. Imagine if there had been side effects, it could have been a global disaster. (Recall the contaminated Cutter polio vax that had live polio in it. Or the SV40 problems. The UQ COVID candidate caused false positives for HIV. Various SARS-Cov1 vaccines caused bad/lethal side effects, see e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-020-00462-y )

Being both too hasty (China) and too blame-averse (EU) seem to be ethical failings.