EU orders UK to hand over vaccines in latest AstraZeneca row

Brussels is demanding that AstraZeneca hands over doses of its Covid-19 vaccines from British plants to make up for the shortfall in its own vaccine deliveries.

In a new twist to the blistering row between the EU and the pharma giant, Brussels chiefs are claiming that AstraZeneca should honour its contract by finding vaccine supplies from other factories.

At a news conference today, the EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said that UK factories – which have not experienced problems – were part of its deal with the company and had to deliver.

She added: “The 27 European Union member states are united that AstraZeneca needs to deliver on its commitments in our agreements.”

However, AstraZeneca has denied that supplying vaccines from its UK plants – while it is still under contract with the British government – was part of the original deal signed with the EU.

The EU signed a deal with AstraZeneca in August for 300 million doses, with an option for 100 million more. The row blew up last week when the company informed the EU that it would get 60 per cent fewer doses than promised for the first quarter of the year.

In an interview on Tuesday with Italian newspaper La Repubblica, AstraZeneca’s chief executive, Pascal Soriot, explained that it is unable to fulfil the first quota of doses because of reported production delays at two plants, one in the Netherlands and one in Belgium.

He added that production was “basically two months behind where we wanted to be” and that the company would hope to meet its delivery targets over the next few months. Once AstraZeneca had fulfilled its obligation to supply the UK with its two million doses a week, then the company could switch production at its UK plants to other orders.

In an unusual move, Soriot also explained that the contract stated that AZ would make its “best effort” to meet the target, rather than obliging it to meet a set deadline for delivery of the vaccines. A best effort clause is standard practice for a company in the process of product development.

However, this interpretation was challenged by Ms Kyriakides. She said this characterisation of the deal was “not correct or acceptable”, and demanded that AZ be “open and transparent” about its production of vaccines.

She added: “That may work at the neighbourhood butcher’s but not in contracts, and not in our advanced purchase agreements.”

“We signed an advanced purchase agreement for a product which at the time did not exist and which still today is not yet authorised and we signed it precisely to ensure that the company builds a manufacturing capacity to produce the vaccine early so that they can deliver a certain volume of doses the day that it is authorised,” she said.

The EU rejected “the logic of first-come first-serve”, she said. However, AstraZeneca is bound to point out that it signed its agreement with the UK some three months before that with the EU.

Indeed, the European Medicines Agency, which now sits in Amsterdam, has yet to give the thumbs-up to the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine although approval is expected this week.

AstraZeneca directors are due to meet with Brussels officials tonight to thrash out the details surrounding the latest row.

Meanwhile, in the UK the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has said he expects the UK contracts to be adhered to. “AstraZeneca has committed to two million doses a week here in the UK and we do not expect that to change.”