The drop of vaccine that overflowed the bottle.
While AstraZeneca is accumulating delivery delays to Europe, a stock of 29 million laboratory doses was found at a subcontractor, angering Brussels.
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, did not hesitate, during a summit which was held on Thursday, to make the link between the slowness of the vaccination and the delays in deliveries from the Swedish-British laboratory.
Behind the scenes, the European Union (EU) is refining a new battle plan for the weeks and months to come.
First step: "reframe" AstraZeneca.
"They pushed the plug too far, criticizes the member of a French ministerial cabinet, by multiplying the provocations.
"The laboratory is particularly suspected of having favored deliveries to Great Britain, to the detriment of Europe, in the name of" first come, first served ".
Boris Johnson's government even introduced an exclusivity clause in the contract with AstraZeneca.
While the EU has contented itself with including the notion of "best effort", which entails more an obligation of means than of results.
"The problem of AstraZeneca, it is not so much the insufficiency of its industrial tool as its dubious arbitration vis-à-vis its customers", still regrets this same source.
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The European executive now has several levers to encourage AstraZeneca to review its strategy.
The first will be judicial.
"A new phase has been activated," confirms within the European Commission.
And our legal services are now mobilized to assess the extent of the litigation and AstraZeneca will be held to account.
“A component which, we remind in Brussels, must not forget the primary objective, namely to produce as many vaccines as possible, including AstraZeneca.
Hence a second lever: the blocking of exports.
It has so far only been activated once, in Italy, for a consignment destined for Australia.
But it could be used again in the name of the principles of reciprocity and proportionality.
If the recipient country does not play the game of two-way exchange;
or if his health situation is less worrying than in Europe.
A new arsenal that could be used in particular against Great Britain.
“Two-thirds of vaccinations in Great Britain were carried out with vaccines made in the EU, notes a European official.
On our side, we only received 20% of the doses promised by AstraZeneca.
When the same laboratory delivered 100% to Great Britain.
And that the latter sent zero doses to the EU.
"
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Result: Europe was only able to vaccinate 14% of its population.
If AstraZeneca's orders had been honored, it estimates that it could have achieved a vaccination rate comparable to that of the United States (nearly 40%).
Janssen and CureVac are coming in the coming weeks
Europe also knows that when it comes to Great Britain, time is on its side.
While nearly 30 million Britons have now received a first dose, less than 3 million have benefited from the booster.
However, the time between the two injections should not exceed 12 weeks.
The British government has therefore started a race against time and has every interest in securing its vaccine supply.
So to pacify its relations with the EU.
Knowing that with 55 production sites in total, the latter is now able to produce 120 million doses per month.
And that it aims at 300 million, still per month, by this summer.
Enough to achieve a production capacity of between 2.5 and 3 billion doses, all vaccines combined, over a year.
The EU would then become the world's leading vaccine producer, ahead of the United States.
Another lever that Brussels intends to use: compensate for the production deficiencies of AstraZeneca with competing vaccines.
A Bercy executive calls this “the communicating vessel strategy”.
After some ignition delays, Moderna on the one hand, and Pfizer-BioNTech on the other, announced at the start of the year their desire to further increase their production for 2021: 1 billion doses for the first, 2 billion for the second.
In early February, Pfizer even promised another 75 million additional doses in the second quarter.
Good news certainly, but will it be enough to make up for the delays inflicted on AstraZeneca?
“No, unfortunately, we regret at Bercy.
But other vaccines, once their marketing authorization has been obtained, will come and help.
The American Janssen in April, the German CureVac in May, the American Novavax or the French Valneva and Sanofi by the end of the year.
Competition which should allow Europe to negotiate the next contracts with more latitude.