European Union pushes AstraZeneca to deliver its promised vaccines

BRUSSELS » The European Union lashed out Monday at pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, accusing it of failing to guarantee delivery of coronavirus vaccines without valid explanation, and threatened to impose tight export controls within days on COVID-19 vaccines made in the bloc.

Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said the EU, already facing heavy criticism for a slow vaccine rollout around its 27 nations, “will take any action required to protect its citizens and its rights.”

The EU, which has 450 million citizens and the economic and political clout of the world’s biggest trading bloc, is lagging badly behind countries like Israel and Britain in rolling out coronavirus vaccine shots for its health care workers and most vulnerable people. That’s despite having over 400,000 confirmed virus deaths since the pandemic began.

The shortfall of planned deliveries of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is expected to get medical approval in the bloc on Friday, combined with hiccups in the distribution of Pfizer-BioNTech shots is putting EU nations under pressure.

“EU member states are united: vaccine developers have societal and contractual responsibilities they need to uphold,” Kyriakides said after two tense negotiating sessions with AstraZeneca that ended late Monday. Both sides will reconvene Wednesday.

The backlog is all the more galling since Kyriakides said the EU had paid 2.7 billion euros ($3.28 billion) to several pharma companies to back the rapid development and ramp up the production potential of several vaccines.

She said Monday’s talks ended “in dissatisfaction with the lack of clarity and insufficient explanations.” The open lack of trust contrasted sharply with the exultant tone only a few months ago when the leading pharma giants made quick and massive strides toward a vaccine against a pandemic the likes of which had not been seen in over a century.

“With our Member States, we have requested from (AstraZeneca) a detailed planning of vaccine deliveries and when distribution will take place,” she said in a Twitter message.

Kyriakides immediately got the support from the bloc’s largest member on the vaccine export controls plan.

“We, as the EU, must be able to know whether and what vaccines are being exported from the EU,” German Health Minister Jens Spahn said. “Only that way can we und erstand whether our EU contracts with the producers are being served fairly. An obligation to get approval for vaccine exports on the EU level makes sense.” Humanitarian deliveries would be exempt.