A dose of AstraZeneca vaccine used at a vaccination center in Ebersberg, near Munich, Germany. Matthias Schrader / AP
After months of squabbles over the continuous delays in the delivery of vaccines against covid-19, the legal battle between the European Commission and AstraZeneca begins. Brussels has sued the Anglo-Swedish laboratory for "breaches of the advance purchase agreements", as announced by a spokesman for the Community Executive this Monday. The legal action was presented last Friday before the Belgian courts with the endorsement of the 27 Member States. "Some terms of the contract have not been respected," Stefan de Keersmaecker, spokesman for Health of the Commission, has assured in a press conference, who has detailed that the multinational pharmaceutical company has not managed to "present a reliable strategy to guarantee the punctual delivery of the dose". The first hearing will take place this Wednesday, according to community sources.
"Our priority is to guarantee the deliveries of vaccines to protect the health of the European Union," said Stella Kyriakides, European Commissioner for Health, in a tweet in which she explained that Brussels has decided to initiate judicial proceedings "together with all the Member states". The claim has been lodged with the Court of First Instance in Brussels, according to spokesman De Keersmaecker. Through it, the doses to which the company committed in the agreement signed on August 27, 2020 between the Commission (on behalf of the Twenty-seven) and AstraZeneca, were claimed, by which the advance purchase of 300 million euros was formalized. doses, with the option of acquiring an additional 100 million. Through her,The Community Executive has asked the courts to take "emergency measures" to guarantee supply, sources from the Commission point out.
With this step, the latest in the escalation of tension between Brussels and the pharmaceutical company since late January, when AstraZeneca's drug was approved for use in the EU and the company began to announce delays in its production, the Commission intends to ensure that that "a sufficient number of doses are delivered rapidly, to which European citizens are entitled and have been promised on the basis of the contract." Brussels considers that the company has breached its contractual obligations by having supplied in the first quarter only 30 million doses of the 120 million agreed (90 million less); for the second quarter the company has announced that it will be able to distribute only 70 million doses of the 180 million to which it had committed (110 million less).
On video, the European Commission denounces AstraZeneca in court.
The sum of AstraZeneca's non-compliances would thus reach 200 million doses in six months, with which 100 million Europeans could have been immunized, since it is a double-prick vaccine.
The Commission has directly accused AstraZeneca of being the main responsible for the delay in the European immunization strategy compared to other countries such as the United States or the United Kingdom.
"AstraZeneca has fully complied with the advance purchase agreement with the European Commission and will defend itself firmly in court," the company replied this Monday through a statement in which it states that it plans to deliver almost 50 million doses to countries. Europeans at the end of April. To date, however, it remains far from those figures: it has distributed 31.3 million in the European Economic Area (includes the EU and Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway), according to data from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.
The lawsuit in the Belgian courts comes after Brussels activated on March 19 the friendly dispute resolution mechanism established in the contract, after which there have been meetings and exchanges between both parties, but without bearing fruit, to Commission judgment. To which AstraZeneca replies in its statement: "We believe that any litigation is unfounded and we welcome the opportunity to resolve this dispute as soon as possible." A legal battle between both parties seems destined to turn into a substantive dispute over the meaning of the “best reasonable effort” to which the company is obliged, according to the contract, to deliver the agreed doses in the established time.
The relationship between Brussels and this laboratory has been stormy since the beginning of the year. Their clashes have stirred vaccine nationalism at the dawn of Brexit, bringing the UK and the EU to the brink of diplomatic crisis, after the Commission approved an export control mechanism to ensure that no doses left EU territory outside. of the radar. The company's drug has also had to undergo new safety research by the European Medicines Agency (EMA). The regulator, which continues to recommend the vaccine as "effective and safe" for those over 18 years of age, has forced the laboratory to include a warning about low platelet thrombosis as a very rare possible side effect.