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EU: “These are serious accusations, so it is not done lightly. I am not saying that there is a problem but if there is a problem and that we have favoured other

EU: “These are serious accusations, so it is not done lightly. I am not saying that there is a problem but if there is a problem and that we have favoured other destinations, other countries – for example the UK over us – then we will defend our interests.” Reality: “The UK government signed a contract with AstraZeneca three months before the commission.” Why does the EU have to be so stupid?

libertine 6y ago
>Reality: “The UK government signed a contract with AstraZeneca three months before the commission.” I keep seeing this argument being thrown around, the other is that the UK funded vaccine research - like any of this invalidates the contract and deadlines signed between EU and AZ.
- NoPie 6y ago
  Contracts are complicated and disputed what they really mean. But it doesn't look that AstraZeneca is acting in bad faith. The UK invested 3 months sooner and that enabled AstraZeneca to solve manufacturing issues sooner. The same issues happened in the EU sites but those were started later, so unfortunately nothing can be done about this. Politicians have a magic thinking that because they will demand fulfilment of the contract, the extra doses will miraculously appear. It's not how it works, the only way to get them is to take them away from the UK. It might or might not be fair to share UK doses with EU considering that this is a global pandemic but that is completely different discussion unrelated to the signed contracts. Looking is at this from legal perspective only is not helpful. The following events, like the EU backtracking on North Ireland export ban, clearly show this. We need cooler heads prevailing.
  - thefounder 6y ago
    So all the agreements go down to who signed first gets priority regardless of whatever was agreed/signed?
    - NoPie 6y ago
      I would say it is fair. The problem is the manufacturing process. The vaccine is slowly grown in large volume bioreactors. If you need long time from investment till finished product, then obviously people who invested sooner can expect that they receive the product before those who invested only now. What happened is that both the first UK and the first EU batch had a low yield. The problems were (hopefully) fixed but it will be months before the next batch will be ready. If the EU had invested sooner, these problems might have been already fixed by now. The UK risked more with earlier investment, so they should get some payout from the risk. From the moral side I think that it would be fair for the UK to send some vaccine supplies to the EU to show solidarity. Maybe they will do if we talk about this more dispassionately. On the other hand, legal threats are not going to work and may only spoil relationships.
      - thefounder 6y ago
        >> I would say it is fair. What has "fair" to do with an agreement/contract?
        NoPie 6y ago
        Exactly, it has nothing to do with the contract. If I make an agreement to delivery 100 million vaccine doses tomorrow and then fail to do it, so what? Concentrate on real issues, on what we can or cannot do, not on some lawyers' fantasies.
        CogitoCogito 6y ago
        Is AZ decreasing their delivery to the UK and Europe by the same percentage? edit: I find the downvotes without explanation a bit depressing. I'm replying to a post containing this: > Concentrate on real issues, on what we can or cannot do, not on some lawyers' fantasies. Decreasing UK and Euro deliveries equally is clearly something that we can do and not some legal fantasy.
        6y ago
  - libertine 6y ago
    Yet from the leaked contract it mentions no where that EU stock will have to come from EU facilities. So it's obvious that EU demands to have the contract fulfilled no matter where vaccines are produced, why should the EU care about that? The elephant in the room is that there might be indeed an export ban of vaccines manufactured in the UK, disguised as contract obligations. Yet when EU mentioned export ban it became some sort of "hostility", while AZ doing it with UK isn't hostility but contract obligations? What if EU slapped in the contracts that all BioNTech production would be all for Europe first due to the contract obligations? As long as it's hidden from public it's not an export ban, right? All of this does indeed sound like politics, smoke and mirrors. So I hope AZ gets squeezed to at least make it clear that some contracts are being privileged over others.
    - NoPie 6y ago
      The UK invested in AZ 3 months earlier. Even if contracts are not very explicit about this, it appears that AZ really saw it as a separate supply chain from the very beginning, at least for initial doses. Looking into contract is like trying to catch them at technicalities which is not done in good faith. Again, it is not contracts that can miraculously create more doses now. It was only because of investments done before. AZ is doing this for non-profit (a big mistake in my opinion), so what can you squeeze out of that? In fact, the EU should have invested even more, make them to build even larger facilities with more bioreactors that in case of low yield they would still have more doses. But it is all in hindsight, so not very useful to say it now. The UK is not privileged because their sites had the same issues with the first batches. The only difference is that they started 3 months earlier.
      - libertine 6y ago
        >The UK invested in AZ 3 months earlier. Even if contracts are not very explicit about this, it appears that AZ really saw it as a separate supply chain from the very beginning, at least for initial doses. Looking into contract is like trying to catch them at technicalities which is not done in good faith. Why are you insisting on 12 weeks difference in a contract celebration when the issue at hands is AZ failing to fulfill their commitment - and it's not by a short amount, but by more than 50%+. If they "saw it as a separate supply chain" then they shouldn't have added to the contract that it wouldn't matter where the vaccines were produced, right? And saying that's a technicality when they are hiding behind the quote "best possible effort". They basically can claim they are doing their best effort while they have plenty of stock being made, and not shipping it. >Again, it is not contracts that can miraculously create more doses now. It was only because of investments done before. AZ is doing this for non-profit (a big mistake in my opinion), so what can you squeeze out of that? >In fact, the EU should have invested even more, make them to build even larger facilities with more bioreactors that in case of low yield they would still have more doses. But it is all in hindsight, so not very useful to say it now. Then maybe AZ should have made arrangements, or asked for help, if they saw they weren't going to be able to fulfill the orders - or maybe they were expecting to move orders from UK, yet they were blocked? Who knows, right? EU released the contract, they are not hiding. So if AZ is hiding something, they should come forward or face the consequences. >The UK is not privileged because their sites had the same issues with the first batches. The only difference is that they started 3 months earlier. Again I see no relevance in this, AZ signed a contract and committed to a deadline which they are failing by A LOT! I'm not saying UK is privileged or not, this is the contract between AZ and EU - now if UK is blocking AZ from exporting vaccines, let it be said out loud and let's all be transparent. If AZ is fulfilling UK contract and shitting on EU contract, then they are the ones privileging UK. EU is asking for transparency. One thing is AZ fulfilling all contracts by less than 50%. Other thing is some countries get 90% of fulfillment, and EU gets 30%.
s1artibartfast 6y ago
This is a completely reasonable question and the contract timing has nothing to do with it. European production of the AZ vaccine has fallen short, and the rest of their sourcing options fell through as well. Even if you accept that AZ has country based supply chains with different priorities, it still makes sense that the EU would want to know if the EU production is being shipped to other locations.

libertine 6y ago

>Reality: “The UK government signed a contract with AstraZeneca three months before the commission.” I keep seeing this argument being thrown around, the other is that the UK funded vaccine research - like any of this invalidates the contract and deadlines signed between EU and AZ.

NoPie 6y ago
Contracts are complicated and disputed what they really mean. But it doesn't look that AstraZeneca is acting in bad faith. The UK invested 3 months sooner and that enabled AstraZeneca to solve manufacturing issues sooner. The same issues happened in the EU sites but those were started later, so unfortunately nothing can be done about this. Politicians have a magic thinking that because they will demand fulfilment of the contract, the extra doses will miraculously appear. It's not how it works, the only way to get them is to take them away from the UK. It might or might not be fair to share UK doses with EU considering that this is a global pandemic but that is completely different discussion unrelated to the signed contracts. Looking is at this from legal perspective only is not helpful. The following events, like the EU backtracking on North Ireland export ban, clearly show this. We need cooler heads prevailing.
- thefounder 6y ago
  So all the agreements go down to who signed first gets priority regardless of whatever was agreed/signed?
  - NoPie 6y ago
    I would say it is fair. The problem is the manufacturing process. The vaccine is slowly grown in large volume bioreactors. If you need long time from investment till finished product, then obviously people who invested sooner can expect that they receive the product before those who invested only now. What happened is that both the first UK and the first EU batch had a low yield. The problems were (hopefully) fixed but it will be months before the next batch will be ready. If the EU had invested sooner, these problems might have been already fixed by now. The UK risked more with earlier investment, so they should get some payout from the risk. From the moral side I think that it would be fair for the UK to send some vaccine supplies to the EU to show solidarity. Maybe they will do if we talk about this more dispassionately. On the other hand, legal threats are not going to work and may only spoil relationships.
    - thefounder 6y ago
      >> I would say it is fair. What has "fair" to do with an agreement/contract?
      - NoPie 6y ago
        Exactly, it has nothing to do with the contract. If I make an agreement to delivery 100 million vaccine doses tomorrow and then fail to do it, so what? Concentrate on real issues, on what we can or cannot do, not on some lawyers' fantasies.
        CogitoCogito 6y ago
        Is AZ decreasing their delivery to the UK and Europe by the same percentage? edit: I find the downvotes without explanation a bit depressing. I'm replying to a post containing this: > Concentrate on real issues, on what we can or cannot do, not on some lawyers' fantasies. Decreasing UK and Euro deliveries equally is clearly something that we can do and not some legal fantasy.
        6y ago
- libertine 6y ago
  Yet from the leaked contract it mentions no where that EU stock will have to come from EU facilities. So it's obvious that EU demands to have the contract fulfilled no matter where vaccines are produced, why should the EU care about that? The elephant in the room is that there might be indeed an export ban of vaccines manufactured in the UK, disguised as contract obligations. Yet when EU mentioned export ban it became some sort of "hostility", while AZ doing it with UK isn't hostility but contract obligations? What if EU slapped in the contracts that all BioNTech production would be all for Europe first due to the contract obligations? As long as it's hidden from public it's not an export ban, right? All of this does indeed sound like politics, smoke and mirrors. So I hope AZ gets squeezed to at least make it clear that some contracts are being privileged over others.
  - NoPie 6y ago
    The UK invested in AZ 3 months earlier. Even if contracts are not very explicit about this, it appears that AZ really saw it as a separate supply chain from the very beginning, at least for initial doses. Looking into contract is like trying to catch them at technicalities which is not done in good faith. Again, it is not contracts that can miraculously create more doses now. It was only because of investments done before. AZ is doing this for non-profit (a big mistake in my opinion), so what can you squeeze out of that? In fact, the EU should have invested even more, make them to build even larger facilities with more bioreactors that in case of low yield they would still have more doses. But it is all in hindsight, so not very useful to say it now. The UK is not privileged because their sites had the same issues with the first batches. The only difference is that they started 3 months earlier.
    - libertine 6y ago
      >The UK invested in AZ 3 months earlier. Even if contracts are not very explicit about this, it appears that AZ really saw it as a separate supply chain from the very beginning, at least for initial doses. Looking into contract is like trying to catch them at technicalities which is not done in good faith. Why are you insisting on 12 weeks difference in a contract celebration when the issue at hands is AZ failing to fulfill their commitment - and it's not by a short amount, but by more than 50%+. If they "saw it as a separate supply chain" then they shouldn't have added to the contract that it wouldn't matter where the vaccines were produced, right? And saying that's a technicality when they are hiding behind the quote "best possible effort". They basically can claim they are doing their best effort while they have plenty of stock being made, and not shipping it. >Again, it is not contracts that can miraculously create more doses now. It was only because of investments done before. AZ is doing this for non-profit (a big mistake in my opinion), so what can you squeeze out of that? >In fact, the EU should have invested even more, make them to build even larger facilities with more bioreactors that in case of low yield they would still have more doses. But it is all in hindsight, so not very useful to say it now. Then maybe AZ should have made arrangements, or asked for help, if they saw they weren't going to be able to fulfill the orders - or maybe they were expecting to move orders from UK, yet they were blocked? Who knows, right? EU released the contract, they are not hiding. So if AZ is hiding something, they should come forward or face the consequences. >The UK is not privileged because their sites had the same issues with the first batches. The only difference is that they started 3 months earlier. Again I see no relevance in this, AZ signed a contract and committed to a deadline which they are failing by A LOT! I'm not saying UK is privileged or not, this is the contract between AZ and EU - now if UK is blocking AZ from exporting vaccines, let it be said out loud and let's all be transparent. If AZ is fulfilling UK contract and shitting on EU contract, then they are the ones privileging UK. EU is asking for transparency. One thing is AZ fulfilling all contracts by less than 50%. Other thing is some countries get 90% of fulfillment, and EU gets 30%.

s1artibartfast 6y ago

This is a completely reasonable question and the contract timing has nothing to do with it. European production of the AZ vaccine has fallen short, and the rest of their sourcing options fell through as well. Even if you accept that AZ has country based supply chains with different priorities, it still makes sense that the EU would want to know if the EU production is being shipped to other locations.