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Costs, delivery amounts and dates, all unrecognizable. It is not uncommon for published contracts to contain crossed out passages. After all, these are trade secrets that your competition shouldn’t necessarily know about. For this reason, the pharmaceutical AstraZeneca also omitted confidential information when it published on Friday the supply contract with the community under pressure from the EU.
Of course, the dispute over reduced deliveries is not fully resolved. On the one hand, the controversial points are unreadable to the public. On the other hand, the interpretation of the two sides is still different. Because the EU Commission contradicts the assertion of AstraZeneca’s managing director, Pascal Soriot, according to which the company is not obliged to deliver certain quantities of vaccine, but only has to make an effort to do so.
The Brussels authority insists that the British-Swedish group deliver the promised vaccination doses. According to the Commission, 300 million cans had been agreed with the option of an additional 100 million. But a week ago, AstraZeneca announced that it would only make 31 million units available by the end of March instead of at least 80 million units. On Friday, the company announced an additional eight million cans, which the EU considers insufficient.
The up to 400 million units originally agreed upon can also be found in the contract, with the addition that this requirement must be met “with the best of efforts.” What this means is also a point of contention, as is the question of whether AstraZeneca should divert vaccines from the UK, where no bottlenecks are reported.
The company does not share the Commission’s view that the EU is entitled to part of the UK production and points out that the UK contract was signed before the EU contract. It is also not clear from the agreement itself whether AstraZeneca is required to divert vaccination doses. In any case, Britain thinks little of this idea.
Schadenfreude on the island
The next front in the dispute is already opening, between the island and the mainland. London already insists that its own agreement with the company will be upheld. The UK has secured 100 million units of the vaccine, which AstraZeneca developed in collaboration with the University of Oxford and which has been used in the UK since the beginning of the year.
There was also some joy at not being part of the EU with its current problems. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said it would have been “a shame” for the kingdom to stick with the EU vaccination program instead of developing its own plan. The government does not want to publish the British agreement with AstraZeneca.
However, the Commission wants to focus on greater transparency. He welcomed the disclosure of AstraZeneca and hopes that other manufacturers will follow suit. Until now, only parts of the contract with the German pharmaceutical company Curevac were accessible. The EU Parliament has been pushing for a long time for more information.
