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The European Commission (EC) modified this Wednesday the control system on the export of vaccines in such a way that When deciding whether to allow the delivery of drugs produced in Community territory to third countries, it will be taken into account whether they also export doses to the EU and how many citizens have been vaccinated, according to European sources explained.
Until now, the only criterion taken into account to block the export of vaccines was whether the sale of the doses to third countries prevented the pharmaceutical companies from complying with the contractual commitments acquired with the European Union (EU).
Now, the decision will also be made based on the principles of reciprocity (to what extent a country also exports vaccines to the EU) and proportionality (what is its ratio of vaccinated population and its epidemiological situation).
European sources assured that it is not a measure intended against any specific country, but rather the decision will be made “case by case”, but the president of the Community Executive, Ursula Von der Leyen, assured last week that Brussels was considering stopping exports to the UK if it still failed to deliver doses of AstraZeneca to the EU.
“The reality is that the United States is prioritizing vaccines for American citizens until everyone is vaccinated, right now there are (no) doses arriving in the EU from the UK,” the sources said.
Brussels has been criticizing for days that vaccines are not reaching the EU from the two factories that AstraZeneca has in the United Kingdom and that, according to the contract signed with the EC, they should supply part of the purchased doses.
In contrast, there have been 10 million doses from the EU to the UK, a conflict that Europe is trying to resolve with the British government.
“We are talking to all our partners,” said the sources mentioned.
Since the vaccine export mechanism was launched in February, the The EU has authorized 380 deliveries to third countries and has only blocked the shipment of 250,000 doses of AstraZeneca from Italy to Australia.
The Commission introduced these modifications a day before the virtual summit that the European leaders will celebrate tomorrow and Friday, in which the delays in the vaccination campaigns in the EU will center the discussions.
AstraZeneca’s defaults have become a problem for countries like Bulgaria and Latvia who bet heavily on their vaccines when last August the contract was signed with the pharmaceutical company, which at that time was the first, with the cheapest drugs and whose technology is already known to be similar to that used against the flu.
