Italy bans export of AstraZeneca vaccine

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AstraZeneca vaccine

Photo: Bernd Günther / imago images / Bernd Günther

Italy takes on AstraZeneca: The government in Rome has rejected an application by the British-Swedish manufacturer to export corona vaccines to Australia.

This is the first time an EU country has used the export control mechanism that the EU Commission only set up at the end of January.

The Italian government informed the Commission last Friday that it would ban the export of 250,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Australia.

The commission did not contradict this, as a spokesman told SPIEGEL.

Such an approach by Rome had already been indicated last week at the video summit of the EU heads of state and government.

According to diplomats, Italy's new head of government Mario Draghi has called for a tough line against AstraZeneca.

The pharmaceutical company has been causing annoyance in the EU for weeks because, from the point of view of the Commission and the member states, it supplies the EU with less vaccine than promised, but other countries such as Great Britain do not.

The Commission then introduced the export mechanism that obliges manufacturers of corona vaccines to have the competent national authorities approve deliveries from the EU to third countries.

Italy is now the first country to prohibit such export.

In Rome it is said that the decision was not made single-handedly, the final decision was made in Brussels.

AstraZeneca did not want to comment on the process.

Only a few rehearsals carried out

The actions of the Italian government could also have political consequences.

Critics had warned of export bans, among other things because they might force companies to break supply contracts with other countries.

When introducing the export mechanism, the Commission also emphasized that it was not concerned with export bans, but merely with transparency: they wanted to get an overview of how much vaccine produced in the EU was being exported to third countries.

However, the mechanism evidently had an effect even before the ban by Italy.

According to insiders, AstraZeneca shipped millions of vaccine doses from the EU to the UK alone before the mechanism went into effect.

After that, only small amounts of samples were taken.

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