Britain has taken “a lot of risks” in rolling out its speedy Covid vaccination programme, France’s Europe minister, Clément Beaune, said as officials in Brussels claimed the EU had “nothing to envy” from nations such as the UK, the US and Israel. With 14% of the UK adult population having received a first jab, compared with 3% of people across the 27 EU member states, there is growing discontent in the bloc at the European commission’s handling of the crisis. In recent days, the European commission has been locked in a bitter public fight with AstraZeneca, the key supplier at this stage of the year, over a significant shortfall in expected doses in the first quarter of this year, raising questions about how momentum will be gained in the coming weeks. Despite growing anger, Sandra Gallina, the European commission official who negotiated the supply contracts, claimed to MEPs that the EU was among the “bigger league of countries” in terms of administering jabs and that she had “nothing to envy” in other nations. She said: “I would like to tell you that today we have already gone beyond a mark of 12m vaccinations … All the member states are in the top league.” According to the latest Our World in Data tables, the worst performing EU member states, the Netherlands and Bulgaria, have vaccinated just 1% of their adult populations. The leading countries in the bloc, Denmark and Malta, have administered jabs to 4.6% and 6% of their respective populations, while Israel has vaccinated 56% and the US 9%. Gallina also declined to guarantee the target of vaccinating 70% of the adult population by the end of the summer, claiming it would depend on the member states’ capacities. Earlier on Monday, Beaune, a close ally of the French president Emmanuel Macron, also defended the EU’s record, adding that the UK’s apparent success had “nothing to do with Brexit”. He claimed the UK strategy had involved risks that France’s public would have found intolerable. He said: “The British are in an extremely difficult health situation. They are taking many risks in this vaccination campaign. And I can understand it, but they are taking many risks.” In his critique of the British rollout, Beaune cited the UK’s decision to extend the gap between the initial and booster jabs to up to 12 weeks, twice the maximum gap recommended by the World Health Organization, and its dependence on the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine. He said: “They have spaced – and the scientists have told us not to – they have massively spaced the two injections apart … They mainly depend on one vaccine, AstraZeneca. The European authority will tell us tomorrow, but Germany has already told us about doubts regarding the effectiveness in people above 65. “The UK has used the vaccine in this age group. So I understand that if they are in a difficult health situation, they take additional risks, but I do not think our citizens would accept if we took all those risks despite the recommendations of our scientists.” The European Medicines Agency on Friday approved AstraZeneca’s vaccine for use in the EU on people over 18, without an upper age limit. But German and Italian regulators have recommended that it should be used only on people aged 64 and under, owing to a lack of data on efficacy in older age groups. Regarding delaying second doses, Prof Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, has said this was a “public health decision” based on the best advice and balance of risks. But the move has proved controversial: while there is evidence from trials that a 12-week gap does not reduce the efficacy of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, Pfizer has stressed it has no data on whether protection after the first dose of its vaccine is sustained after three weeks. On Monday, Macron, conceded that the EU needed to “be more efficient” its vaccine deployment as he hosted his Serbian counterpart, Aleksandar Vučić, in Paris. The European commission remains in discussions with AstraZeneca to try to secure more doses of its vaccine than the company has so far pledged in the first quarter of the year. On Sunday, the commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said AstraZeneca had raised its target of supplies to the EU from 31m to 40m doses before the end of March. It is believed the new doses will be sourced from India. A commission spokesperson declined to comment. Von der Leyen had faced heavy criticism over a plan unveiled on Friday to effectively create a vaccine border on the island of Ireland as part of a new export authorisation regulation. The EU wants to stop providers transporting doses out of the bloc and had been concerned that Northern Ireland could be a backdoor for exports to the UK. The commission appeared to deflect the blame on Monday to one of Von der Leyen’s deputies. “What I can tell you is that there is one cabinet which was leading on this, that is executive vice-president Valdis Dombrovskis, because he is in charge of trade,” the commission’s chief spokesperson said. “This regulation falls under the responsibility of Mr Dombrovskis and his cabinet and of course the services of the commission which respond to him.” Alexander Stubb, the former prime minister of Finland who sought to become the commission president in 2019, tweeted: “Number one rule of any leader: if your organisation screws up; never, ever blame your team publicly. When the shit hits the fan, you take it. After that discuss with your team privately about what happen and how you can improve the situation together.”