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AstraZeneca-Dependence in Belgium (archive)
Photo: NICOLAS MAETERLINCK / imago images / Belga
In the conflict over deliveries of the vaccine from AstraZeneca, the EU is pulling out all the stops: On Thursday, inspectors from the Belgian health authorities arrived at a plant in Seneffe, where AstraZeneca's corona vaccine is produced.
Several media outlets report on the control, including the AP news agency.
The mission of the inspectors: to check whether the Group's declaration of the delivery bottleneck announced to the EU is really correct - or whether in truth material is being sent from the factory to customers in Great Britain.
The inspection took place after the EU Commission asked the Belgian government to do so.
She is under public pressure because vaccinations in EU countries have so far been slow and she has apparently miscalculated when ordering the vaccine.
The EU has been arguing with the British-Swedish manufacturer since it announced a delivery cut.
Instead of the expected 80 million vaccine doses in the first quarter, only 31 million should arrive according to EU information.
Apparently documents confiscated
In Brussels, however, there are suspicions that bottlenecks in the supply of the European Union with the AstraZeneca vaccine could be due to the fact that the company supplies the UK and other non-EU countries with full quantities of the vaccine - possibly also from factories within the EU .
AstraZeneca denies that.
It is precisely this suspicion that the inspectors at the Belgian plant are now supposed to investigate.
According to a report by the Guardian, they confiscated samples and documents from the facility, and further control visits are planned.
In the conflict, both sides are spreading blame: the EU considers AstraZeneca's argument that there are technical problems in Belgium to be advanced and points out that the group has promised Great Britain that it will continue to deliver two million vaccine doses per week.
The company says, however, that the EU only concluded its supply contract months after the British - and for this reason it will be supplied later.
A spokeswoman for the Belgian health minister said that the inspectors would now draft a report together with experts from the Netherlands, Italy and Spain.
It should be presented in the coming days.
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