By Ron Howells • Published: 26 Apr 2021 • 20:18
EU Launches It's Threatened Legal Action Against AstraZeneca Over Vaccine Deliveries. image: Wikimedia
EU Launches It’s Threatened Legal Action Against AstraZeneca Over Vaccine Deliveries.
THE EUROPEAN UNION has launched legal action it has been threatening for weeks against pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca over delivery shortfalls of its coronavirus vaccine, the European Commission announced today, Monday, April, 26. Spain, in particular, was left in difficulty trying to put in action it’s vaccine strategy and lost ground due to low stocks of the drug.
“The commission has started last Friday a legal action against the company AstraZeneca on the basis of breaches of the advanced purchase agreement,” EU spokesman Stefan De Keersmaecker said, adding the action was launched on behalf of the 27 member states.
European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety Stella Kyriakides said on Twitter: “Our priority is to ensure Covid-19 vaccine deliveries take place to protect the health of [the European Union].”
“Every vaccine dose counts. Every vaccine dose saves lives,” she said.
Under a disputed contract between AstraZeneca and the European Union, the Anglo-Swedish pharma firm AstraZeneca had initially been expected to deliver over 100 million doses of its Covid-19 vaccine, developed with the University of Oxford, to EU countries in the first three months of the year.
However, citing production issues, the company said, it only delivered 29.4 million doses.
AstraZeneca defended the shortfall, saying that its contract with the European Union said it would do its “best-effort” to deliver supplies on time. The EU argued that the contract also states that AstraZeneca’s British factories should be used to supply vaccines to the EU and that the contract states that no other contract (ie, the UK-AZ contract) should interfere with AstraZeneca’s commitments to supply the EU with its vaccines.
There has been no such shortfall in AstraZeneca vaccine deliveries to the UK, which had included a clause with the millions in funding it supplied to develop the Oxford Covid-19 vaccine. The European Commission and AstraZeneca had been engaged in a dispute mechanism for a few weeks, which is a process contained in the contract.
In response, the company said today that it regrets the Commission’s decision to launch legal action and said it believes the litigation is “without merit”.
“AstraZeneca has fully complied with the Advance Purchase Agreement with the European Commission and will strongly defend itself in court. We believe any litigation is without merit and we welcome this opportunity to resolve this dispute as soon as possible,” the company said in a statement.
Source: France24
Share this story
Subscribe to our Euro Weekly News alerts to get the latest stories into your inbox!
By signing up, you will create a Euro Weekly News account if you don't already have one. Review our Privacy Policy for more information about our privacy practices.
Ron actually started his working career as an Ophthalmic Technician- things changed when, during a band rehearsal, his amplifier blew up and he couldn’t get it fixed so he took a course at Birmingham University and ended up doing a degree course. He built up a chain of electronics stores and sold them as a franchise over 35 years ago. After five years touring the world Ron decided to move to Spain with his wife and son, a place they had visited over the years, and only bought the villa they live in because it has a guitar-shaped swimming pool!. Playing the guitar since the age of 7, he can often be seen, (and heard!) at beach bars and clubs along the length of the coast. He has always been interested in the news and constantly thrives to present his articles in an interesting and engaging way.
What complete and hypocrisy by the EU. They are sitting on millions of unused doses because VDL and Macron said the vaccine was no good causing a huge lack of confidence. Why are they concerned about the non delivery of vaccines they have no intention of using? Given that the UK financed and commissioned the vaccine at one tenth the cost of the Phizer vaccine it sounds more like a case of Phizer ultimately financing this action to discredit the AZ vaccine because they have tasted the sour grapes. Why anyone gives any credit whatsoever to these already discredited incompetent members of the EU commission is anyone’s guess. Utter incompetence.
They are using it as a cover up for their own ineptitude and desire to play petty politics, rather than save lives
The EU has lost thousands of its citizens’ lives unnecessarily because of its ineptitude and its playing of stupid political games delaying them being vaccinated. This legal action can only be a cover up and they naivety think people will fall for it. Brits lives have been saved, thanks to Brexit taking us out of this systemic failure. Well done Boris et al.
If Boris supposedly said “Let the bodies pile up in their thousands”, in reality this is the EU policy, for the reasons I described earlier
Funny, the only comments I see are from pro UK, pro Brexit, anti EU responders. Why is that?
By the way, this newsletter is called EUROweeklynews. Why not call it “Britsabroad” or something like that? It would be nice, in general, if a EUROpean correspondent were to write and comment on “hot” topics. But I guess this publication is primarily directed at the UK public living in Spain(?)
Comments are closed.
By signing up, you will create a Euro Weekly News account if you don’t already have one. Review our Privacy Policy for more information about our privacy practices.
Download our media pack in either English or Spanish.