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If the company fails to increase the delivery of its Covid-19 vaccine by next month, the EU has asked AstraZeneca to compensate billions of euros.
A European Union lawyer said in a court in Brussels on Wednesday that if the European manufacturer did not provide an additional 20 million injections by the end of June, the manufacturer would pay a fine of 10 euros per day.
The demand is part of a lawsuit initiated by the European Commission to force AstraZeneca to deliver 90 million doses in the second quarter of this year, instead of the 70 million currently planned. The lawsuit is an escalation of the battle between the EU and the company over the long-term delivery shortage of 300 million contracts.
Rafael Jafferali, an EU lawyer, said in a court in the Belgian capital that the company “didn’t even try to comply with the EU contract.”
It was initially expected that AstraZeneca would supply as many as 300 million doses to the EU in the first six months of this year, but due to production problems, this forecast was lowered to only 100 million doses. The committee hopes that the court will order the company to increase the number to 120 million.
The European Commission told the Financial Times: “The European Union does not accept AstraZeneca’s late delivery of vaccines and believes that it violates the contract.” “AstraZeneca must catch up with the agreed timetable as soon as possible.”
The EU believes that AstraZeneca should use 50 million doses from other manufacturers to make up for the shortage, which is designated as a possible source of production in the contract between the two parties. Nearly 40 million of these shots were shot in the UK, and most of the rest were shot in the United States.
Hakim Boularbah, AstraZeneca’s legal counsel, emphasized to the court how complicated it is to produce vaccines.
He said: “This is not a contract to provide shoes or T-shirts.”
The company has always believed that it has made “the greatest reasonable effort” as required by the contract to fulfill the EU’s delivery schedule.
in Interview CEO Pascal Soriot said in an interview with the Financial Times last week that factories that supply oil to the EU are struggling with production issues, while factories like South Korea do not. This is “unfortunate”.
The EU is particularly angry because AstraZeneca has been more successful in fulfilling its British contracts. Soriot said that before AstraZeneca became a partner, the original contract between the British government and the University of Oxford included preferential access to vaccines produced in the UK production base.
After the hearing, Boularbah said that AstraZeneca provided evidence that “the European Commission realized during the original bidding process last summer that the British government has priority over the UK supply chain, which runs counter to the committee’s repeated and wrong arguments.”
AstraZeneca is still the second largest supplier in the EU after BioNTech/Pfizer. Unlike many competitors, AstraZeneca provides vaccines on a non-profit basis during the pandemic.
The 20 million additional doses that the European Commission seeks from the company are no different from the European Union’s accelerated vaccine launch. Some countries restrict the use of the AstraZeneca jab because of its rare but potentially fatal side effects. Denmark has completely stopped using it.
However, more AstraZeneca shootings will provide a greater buffer for the EU, as it is expected to achieve its goal of fully vaccinating 70% of its adult population (about 255 million people) by July. The group currently estimates that by the end of June, it will receive 519 million doses of all vaccines, including 55 million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine.
EU officials suggested that the additional dose of AstraZeneca may come from other international production bases in the United States or China that have not yet approved the use of needles.
It is expected that the Belgian court will make a ruling on this case next month. The commission also filed a separate legal claim for the loss of AstraZeneca’s overall failure to perform the contract. The company disputed this claim.
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