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There are plenty of people across Europe who have been watching the vaccine rollout in the United Kingdom with a certain jealousy.

While the British model appears to have been rapid and far-reaching, some European countries are facing allegations of being sluggish, and allowing themselves to be tied down by bureaucracy.

In France, for instance, the first week of vaccinations brought only a meagre 516 injections. By comparison, the UK managed 130,000 in its first week.

President Emmanuel Macron responded with a clear demand to his ministers to sort things out - to cut through the bureaucracy that was holding things up.

It's a similar story in other countries.

In Spain's capital, Madrid, only about 6% of doses were used in the first week. The opposition parties in Italy have lambasted Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte for not pushing the vaccine programme harder.

The response has normally been two-fold - that it takes some time to get things going, and also that the brewing problem will be in getting hold of doses, not administering them.

That's why the approval of the Moderna vaccine is so important - the EU has ordered 80 million doses, with an option to buy another 80 million after that.

In fact, the EU has deals in place with six separate vaccine companies, whose products are becoming available at different times.

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Moderna is the second to gain authorisation, after the Pfizer/BioNTech product. The Oxford/AstraZeneca, already being used in the UK, is likely to be approved before too long.

There are also contracts with Sanofi-GSK, Janssen and CureVac.

Between them, these six contracts equate to around 2 billion vaccine doses - but clearly some will arrive sooner than others.

As it happens, the Moderna order, of 160 million doses, is the smallest commitment of the six.

The question for Europe is about scaling up its distribution quickly, prioritising the most needy and vulnerable and, in some places, convincing the sceptics to embrace vaccination.