The European Union has launched legal action against the Swedish-British laboratory AstraZeneca, which it accuses of not having kept its commitments on deliveries of its anti-Covid vaccine, the European Commission announced on Monday April 26. “The terms of the contract were not respected and the company was not in a position to implement a reliable strategy to ensure on-time deliveries,” said a spokesperson for the company. ‘European executive, specifying that this action had been launched this Friday on behalf of the EU and the Twenty-Seven, “unanimously in agreement” with this decision.
AstraZeneca delivered in the first quarter only 30 million doses to the EU out of the 120 million contractually promised. In the second quarter, it intends to provide only 70 million of the 180 million initially planned. The EU contract with AstraZeneca, a censored version of which has been made public, is a contract under Belgian law, specifying that the laboratory, the Commission and the States undertake to settle any possible dispute “before the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts. established in Brussels ”. “What matters to us in this matter is to ensure that there is a rapid delivery of a sufficient number of doses to which European citizens are entitled, and which had been promised to us on the basis of the contract”, argued the spokesperson for the Commission.
Towards termination of the contract, with damages
In this civil action, which would take several months, the Europeans “should request either the termination of the contract for non-performance, with damages, or the performance of the contract (the deliveries), which is unlikely”, Belgian lawyer Arnaud Jansen, who studied the contract with De Bandt, estimated last week. The clause in which the laboratory commits to « best reasonable effort » in this contract (obligation of means) “should be at the heart” of the case, according to him.
AstraZeneca should argue for its part that it had other contracts to honor with the United Kingdom where the vaccine was authorized at the end of December, a month earlier than in the EU, according to the same source. The Commission already activated on March 19 a contractual dispute settlement procedure to resolve the conflict with AstraZeneca, and announced that it had not activated the option the EU had in the contract to buy an additional 100 million doses .
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