Belgian judge tasked with handling dispute between European Union and pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca regarding the deliveries of the vaccines for Covid-19 that the “27” were expecting, will announce its decision within a month at the most.
This afternoon, in a very short hearing, the precautionary measures were heard in the court of first instance in Brussels, so that the judge could ask some questions on “technical” issues on both sides.
The decision will be issued “within the legal deadline”, ie in less than a month, the judge announced, concluding the procedure.
The chronicle of the controversy
The EU claims that the Anglo-Swedish company chose to supply the United Kingdom with its product, resulting in significant delays in deliveries to the “27”, in violation of the contract signed between Brussels and AstraZeneca at the end of August 2020.
After the amicable settlement attempt failed, the European Commission, which negotiated this pre-purchase agreement on behalf of the “27”, decided at the end of April to appeal to the Belgian court. In particular, the Commission requires AstraZeneca to use its six vaccine production units to honor its contract and requests a fine of € 10 per vaccine dose for each day of delay. This means, according to calculations made at the trial, that AstraZeneca could be asked to pay 200 million euros daily from July 1, if the company delivers only 70 of the 90 million installments by June 30.
The EU accuses AstraZeneca of delivering only 30 of the promised 120 million installments in the first quarter and is demanding the remaining 90 million by the end of June.
In total, the EU has ordered 300 million doses from AstraZeneca, which has pledged to deliver them all before the end of the year. However, Brussels requests that they have received the whole by September 30 at the latest.
At the May 26 hearing, AstraZeneca denied through its lawyers that it had breached the contract. The text he signed “does not stipulate binding deadlines” for deliveries, said one of them, Hakim Boularba.
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