EU officials attacked the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca on Wednesday, but failed to make commitments to address a “massive” deficiency in coronavirus vaccine production that will leave the block at least 75 million doses lower than expected in the first three months of 2021.
“We regret the continued lack of clarity in the delivery schedule and call for a clear plan from AstraZeneca for the prompt delivery of the amount of vaccines we have reserved for the first quarter,” said EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides. posted on Twitter after a meeting on Wednesday night that included an unexpected appearance of AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot.
Kyriakides insisted the European Commission would work with the company “to find solutions and deliver vaccines quickly for EU citizens”. But the assurance seemed pretty empty after a day when the EU threatened legal action, raised the prospect of vaccine export restrictions and blamed Soriot and his company for failing to comply with “contractual, societal and moral obligations” – only to get out of the meeting empty-handed.
The failure to earn any concrete compensation from the company has been sure to escalate political tensions in the 27 EU member states, with the coronavirus pandemic still raging and political leaders under increasing pressure to explain why the EU has lagged behind countries such as Israel, United States. and in particular the United Kingdom in the implementation of vaccines to citizens.
Tensions are particularly high over the situation in the UK, where AstraZeneca is headquartered and where the company now manufactures its vaccine at two factories that appear to be operating at full capacity. The UK is currently receiving all of its expected deliveries from those factories after the initial hiccups that the vaccine company in the UK had last month, which were manufactured at factories in the Netherlands and Germany.
In an astonishing interview with Repubblica on Tuesday, Soriot blamed the EU for being three months slower than the UK in finalizing vaccine purchase agreements, which AstraZeneca developed with Oxford University and said that the British government rightly expected that all doses of vaccine produced within its borders would remain there for the foreseeable future.
At a news conference on Wednesday, Kyriakides bluntly accused AstraZeneca of breaching its contractual obligations and urging the company to do everything necessary, including redirecting supplies from British factories to make up for the deficit on the continent. She also insisted that the UK has no priority application for vaccines manufactured in its territory.
“Unable to ensure production capacity is against the letters and spirit of our agreement,” Kyriakides said, adding: “We regret the logic of first come, first served. This may work for neighborhood butchers, but not in contracts and not in our advance purchase agreements. ”
In London, Prime Minister Boris Johnson made it clear that he did not want to take part in the EU dispute and did not indicate any desire to lend a helping hand to Brussels. “We are very confident in our supply,” Johnson said on Wednesday when asked about the EU’s claim to take doses in the UK. “We are very confident in our contracts and we are moving forward on this basis.”
Asked about the EU’s pressure on AstraZeneca, Johnson said: “The Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine is obviously very important for our country and for the world. The issue is for our friends in the EU and AstraZeneca. ”
Money matters
Despite Soriot’s criticism that the EU was late in committing to buy his company’s vaccine, in fact, four EU countries reached an agreement with AstraZeneca in June last year, shortly after the UK signed its contract. originally in May.
But the details mattered little, as it became clear that the EU had no leverage on the company, despite allocating € 336 million to help it develop the vaccine and prepare to produce it in massive quantities, just before receiving official approval from the European Medicines Agency, which is expected on Friday.
The commission has not yet made a full 336m euros – it remains a “good piece”, an EU official said, “not just a few cents”. Another Commission official said the Commission would “follow” the company to get a refund.
But withholding or recovering money will not be a consolation, given that what EU heads of state and government need – and what their citizens are asking for – is the vaccine.
And on this front, there seemed to be little that Brussels could do to ensure more doses immediately.
Commission officials have acknowledged that the disputes will last for years. “This is not really the focus of our attention,” said another EU official. “Our focus is on getting the contract done now, because vaccines are needed now, not in two years.”
Meanwhile, in the European Parliament, the chairman of the committee on health, Pascal Canfin intends to shoot The executive directors of AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna participate in the hearings.
Accumulation problems
While the EU intends to impose new export controls – initially in order to determine exactly how much vaccine is being produced and where producers intend to send it – taking too hard a line on this front could backfire.
Already leaders in other parts of the world, such as South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, are accusing the EU and richer countries of seizing the vaccine and denying access to developing countries. And there are other EU partners and allies, including colleagues in the G7, Canada, who rely at least in part on EU vaccine production for their supply.
Far from being heavily armed, AstraZeneca reiterated its plan to administer the vaccine as soon as possible. The company, which has production facilities around the world, also did not express concern about potential export restrictions.
“Our CEO Pascal Soriot was delighted to attend a meeting with the Vaccine Board tonight,” a company spokesman said in a statement on Wednesday evening. “We had a constructive and open conversation about the complexity of increasing vaccine production and the challenges we faced. We have engaged in even closer coordination to jointly establish a pathway for the administration of our vaccine in the coming months, as we continue our efforts to bring this vaccine to millions of Europeans without any profit during the pandemic. ”
Soriot’s participation in the meeting also indicated the company’s relative confidence, despite rains of criticism from Brussels over Soriot’s comments in his newspaper interview.
AstraZeneca told the Commission by e-mail on Tuesday that it will not attend the board meeting because it has no new information to share. The company later reversed course and said it would include its executive vice president responsible for Europe and Canada.
Contract the war of words
AstraZeneca’s uniform statement was a stark contrast to the heated rhetoric coming from the Commission’s press room on Wednesday, where hundreds of journalists attended a series of press conferences and technical meetings, focusing overwhelmingly on the vaccine dispute. .
At the press conference, Kyriakides tried to take a heavy line. “Let me be crystal clear,” she said. “The 27 member states of the European Union are united by the fact that AstraZeneca must fulfill its commitments in our agreements. We are in a pandemic. We lose people every day. These are not numbers and they are not statistics. These are people with family, friends and colleagues who are all affected as well. Pharmaceutical companies, vaccine developers, have moral, societal and contractual responsibilities that they must support. ”
And he took a special issue with Soriot’s assertion that AstraZeneca had no obligation to administer a certain number of doses, but only to make “the best effort.”
“The view that the company is not obliged to deliver because we have signed a ‘best effort’ agreement is neither correct nor acceptable,” Kyriakides said.
She and other Commission officials insisted that EU purchasing agreements do not differentiate between AstraZeneca plants in the UK and those in EU countries and said the Commission would never have agreed to an agreement based exclusively on a single plant.
They insisted that AstraZeneca had made clear commitments to Brussels, while also being aware of its obligations to the UK, and rejected vague claims of production problems at a Belgian plant as an insufficient excuse for a shortcoming that they said would leave the EU with only 25% of expected vaccine deliveries in the first quarter.
An official suggested that AstraZeneca misled the EU about its capabilities. “It was only last Friday that I discovered that, you know, there was a real massive deficiency and that it is really something that is not acceptable,” the official said.
While the Commission was quick to manage the situation, it suddenly found itself changing some long-standing positions. After months of insisting on confidentiality, it was absolutely essential for the success of the vaccine purchase agreements, the Commission said it was asking AstraZeneca to make its contract public with the EU, saying it would challenge Soriot’s claims.
Last week, some EU heads of state and government expressed strong anger at Pfizer, another vaccine maker, over a temporary slowdown in production at its Belgian plant. But on Tuesday, the Commission praised Pfizer for managing its problems better than AstraZeneca.
Commission officials also acknowledged that they have developed their contract with AstraZeneca for the production of vaccines in Europe, in particular to avoid the risk of imposing export restrictions by former US President Donald Trump. Only now is the Commission moving forward with its own export restrictions.
But a senior EU official said the main goal of the bloc is not really to focus on such complexities. “What really interests us, really – you have to realize – is not the dispute over this or that issue,” the senior official said. “We want to have the vaccines. We want to find the solution at the company.”
Charlie Cooper and Florian Eder contributed to the reporting.
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