The EU SUES AstraZeneca for 'failing to honour its contract' after Brussels' disastrous vaccine roll-out put it months behind US and UK
- EU has filed legal action against AstraZeneca over Covid vaccine shortfalls
- Firm due to supply 180m doses in first half of the year, but only a third arrived
- EU wants to get its hands on jabs made in Britain to make up for the shortfall
- AstraZeneca said today that the EU's legal argument is 'without merit'The EU is suing AstraZeneca over
shortfalls in Covid vaccines which it blames for slowing the continent's
jab roll-out to a crawl.
Legal action was launched against the British-Swedish drug-maker on Friday last week, a spokesman for the EU commission said today, adding that all 27 member nations supported it.
'Terms of the contract have not been respected and the company has not... come up with a reliable strategy to ensure timely delivery of doses,' the spokesman said.
The lawsuit comes after AstraZeneca delivered just a third of the jabs it promised in the first half of this year, with the EU arguing it has a right to vaccines made in the UK to make up the numbers.
But Astra has previously argued that the two supply chains are separate and today described the EU's legal claim as being 'without merit'.
The EU has announced it is suing AstraZeneca for failing to live up to the terms of its Covid vaccine contract after deliveries fell short (file image)AstraZeneca's contract with the EU foresaw an initial 300 million doses for distribution among member countries, with an option for a further 100 million.
But only 30million doses were delivered in the first quarter of 2021, and the firm says it can provide 70million in the second quarter, rather than the 180million it promised.
News of the shortfalls led to an almighty row between the EU and Astra boss Pascal Soriot back in January, which saw allegations of vaccine nationalism thrown around after it emerged all UK orders had been filled.
Soriot strongly denied favoritism, saying the UK had been given its doses first because it signed a contract earlier and had a separate supply chain that was not affected by issues in Europe.
In response the EU published the contract it signed with Astra - claiming it showed that factories in Britain should be used to make up the numbers.
But a legal analyst who examined the contract for MailOnline said the paragraph is misleading and does not say what the EU claims it says.
Instead, it showed the EU's legal position to be 'unsustainable' and their public statements to be 'false', Steven Barrett, a respected commercial lawyer with the Radcliffe Chambers, told MailOnline.
Nevertheless, it appears the EU has decided to advance its argument in court in the hopes of securing more jabs for its vaccine drive - which is lagging far behind both the UK and US.
The UK has run one of the fastest jab programmes in the world and has given at least one dose to around half its total population, or more than 65 per cent of adults.
The Netherlands, alongside a number of EU countries, has crippled its own vaccine programme with a series of stops and starts in its roll-out
The US, meanwhile, has fast been catching up and has now vaccinated some 42 per cent of its population, with a goal of offering every adult a jab by July.
The EU has managed just 20 per cent of its total population, though insists it is on track to vaccinate 70 per cent of adults by the end of the year.
'The Commission has started last Friday a legal action against AstraZeneca,' the EU spokesman told a news conference today.
'Some terms of the contract have not been respected and the company has not been in a position to come up with a reliable strategy to ensure timely delivery of doses,' the spokesman said, explaining what triggered the move.
'We want to make sure there is a speedy delivery of a sufficient number of doses that European citizens are entitled to and which have been promised on the basis of the contract,' he said.
But supply issues are far from the only problem affecting Europe's roll-out.
Bureaucracy, red-tape and over-cautious regulators have also combined to make the continent's jab drive one of the world's slowest.
AstraZeneca jabs are currently restricted across much of Europe due to fears about blood clots, while Denmark has stopped using the jab entirely.
In Holland that has led Jaap van Deldon, who heads the vaccination department at Holland's public health institute, to warn that most of the country's 11million AstraZeneca jabs will likely go un-used.
Ursula von der Leyen, who was responsible for signing the EU's contract with AstraZeneca, has previously argued that jabs made in Britain should be used to make up the shortfalls
'But at some point it is of course true that we are done with AstraZeneca,' he told the AD newspaper.
'That moment will come a bit faster than expected, because Pfizer has started to deliver more.
'We estimate that we will largely no longer need the AstraZeneca deliveries that we will receive from the second half of May.'
It comes as the Netherlands battles soaring cases of coronavirus with new infections topping 8,000 in recent days. Intensive care doctors in the Noord-Brabant province have warned that wards at some hospitals are at breaking point.
The Netherlands, alongside a number of EU countries, has crippled its own vaccine programme with a series of stops and starts in its roll-out.
The country introduced age restrictions on its use amid a 'possible link' between the jab and very rare blood clots - even though the European Medicines Agency saying it is 'firmly convinced' the benefits of the jab outweigh the risks.
First the vaccine was halted in Holland, then permitted, and then banned for those under the age of 60 due to the blood clot fears resulting in many losing confidence in the jab.
While the Netherlands has ordered 11 million doses of the jab, which is only being given to people between the ages of 60 and 64, only 1.5 million doses have been handed out so far to the population of around 17 million.
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