The European Union is still interested in the anti-Covid 19 vaccine from the Valneva laboratory and is continuing its negotiations, the French government assured Tuesday, while the United Kingdom has just terminated its contract with the Franco-Austrian group.
"We have the will to continue" negotiations with Valneva at EU level, said a spokesperson for the Ministry of the Economy, during a weekly conference on the vaccination campaign.
Valneva, partly based in Nantes, is developing a vaccine against Covid-19, which is still in the clinical trials stage.
He had nevertheless already signed a contract with the British government, to deliver 100 million doses in the event of positive results.
But the group announced this week that London had terminated the contract, a big blow for the laboratory because it was its only order for this vaccine.
The title has lost nearly 40% on the stock market since this announcement.
He did not give details on the reasons for this termination, specifying just that London accused him of having "failed in its obligations", which he "vigorously contests".
Read alsoValneva's anti-Covid-19 vaccine: five minutes to understand the termination of the contract by the United Kingdom
But, "on the European side, the contractual negotiations conducted by the Commission on this contract are continuing (...) for deliveries in 2022", declared the French Ministry of the Economy.
Diversify vaccination coverage
Negotiations between Valneva and the EU have also been complex.
They had been interrupted at the beginning of the year, before resuming thereafter.
Several European countries, including France, are now relying on this vaccine to "diversify" vaccine coverage, the ministry said, stressing that it is an inactivated virus vaccine project.
No inactivated virus vaccine is currently approved in the EU.
Those that are distributed are either messenger RNA - Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna - or viral vector - AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.
For its part, Valneva believes in the future of such technology. The group had indicated at the end of August, on the basis of the phase 1 and 2 trials, "to have a vaccine which is effective in a way greater than 80%". It remains to be proven that they resist phase 3, and the Delta variant.
