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Vaccine dispute: EU inspectors discovered 29 million doses of Astrazeneca vaccine at a bottling plant in Anagni.
An impending export ban ensures that London is suddenly ready to talk
Photo: VINCENZO PINTO / AFP
The UK is about to sign a vaccine deal with the European Union (EU).
As the English daily newspaper "The Times" reports in its Saturday edition, the agreement could eliminate the risk of a delivery stop by the EU.
As part of the agreement, the EU wants to lift its threat to ban the export of Pfizer BioNTech vaccines to the UK.
In return, the British government is ready to forego some long-term supplies of the AstraZeneca vaccine against the coronavirus, which is to be exported from Holland.
The UK government, Pfizer-BioNTech and AstraZeneca have not yet been reached for comment.
"Until Astrazeneca honors its promises, everything will remain in Europe"
Previously, the EU Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, had campaigned for a ban on the export of Astrazeneca vaccination doses.
Exports of Astrazeneca's corona vaccine should not be allowed until the company has finally fulfilled its delivery obligations to EU countries, said Breton.
"We will make sure that everything stays in Europe until the company honors its commitments," said Breton on Friday evening.
The export control mechanism tightened this week is the instrument for this.
The announcement could exacerbate tensions with Britain.
Because London is hoping for deliveries from a Halix plant in the Netherlands, which officially received EU approval on Friday.
For the EU countries, the approval of the system and a possible export ban for Astrazeneca could mean that they get more of the contractually agreed cans.
"We now expect the vaccines that are manufactured in this plant to be delivered to the EU member states in the next few days," said Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides.
Only 30 million cans instead of 120 million for the EU - but exports from Europe to England
The manufacturer is extremely behind.
Astrazeneca has promised the EU 120 million doses of corona vaccine for the first quarter, but only delivers 30 million, Breton said at a press conference in Spain.
According to information from the EU Commission, only a little more than 17 million cans have arrived.
Breton said you have the tools "that we control and that we have no drains, if I may say so".
The EU has had export controls since February 1st.
Accordingly, manufacturers must have exports of corona vaccine approved.
Since then, according to official information, 380 applications have been approved and only one rejected: Italy banned the export of 250,000 cans of Astrazeneca to Australia at the beginning of March.
No other applications from the company are known.
This week the EU Commission tightened export controls, deleted exceptions and expanded the criteria for bans.
For this she got support at the EU summit on Thursday.
However, export bans should only be applied in emergencies because there are fears of countermeasures, such as the capping of raw material supplies.
Chancellor Angela Merkel said after the summit, there is no need to disrupt international supply chains.
Millions of vaccine doses from the Halix plant have already been bunkered in Anagni, Italy
Breton called the approval of the Dutch vaccine factory Halix good news because, according to him, Astrazeneca vaccine was already being pre-produced there and sent to Italy for filling.
"Everything that was made at Halix in Leiden, all batches were brought to Anagni, we found the batches there, they are there, they are bottled," said Breton.
After the EMA approval on Friday, they could be shipped in the next few days or weeks.
The Italian authorities had inspected the bottling plant in Anagni near Rome a few days ago and discovered 29 million doses of Astrazeneca vaccine there.
According to the manufacturer, 16 million of them are supposed to go to the EU, the remaining doses to the international Covax initiative for poorer countries.
Regarding this information from the company, Breton said: "We are in the process of checking this, I cannot confirm it."
Secured supplies from Astrazeneca and other manufacturers could alleviate the internal EU dispute over the distribution of the corona vaccines, which have so far been very scarce.
Austria and five other states requested corrections at the EU summit on Thursday, but achieved little.
The summit declaration confirms the previous distribution key according to population size.
After hours of dispute, it was only agreed to negotiate an early partial delivery of ten million vaccine doses from Biontech / Pfizer "in a spirit of solidarity".
This is supposed to plug a few holes in the short term.
So far, the distribution has been as follows: Basically, the states have access to a share according to their population size in the EU - for Germany that is just under 19 percent.
If a country does not want its share, or not entirely, other EU states can buy up the quantities.
For example, some states were skeptical of the expensive vaccine from Biontech / Pfizer and relied more on the inexpensive product from Astrazeneca.
So they fell behind.
Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said on Friday that if the system were to continue as before, some states would have enough vaccine for 90 percent of their population in the summer, while others would only have enough vaccine for 40 percent.
"This is unacceptable."
Austria's Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said a compromise was needed.
la / dpa