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Brussels will have to sue AstraZeneca for alleged breach of its agreement to supply vaccines to the EU, and launched a fierce legal battle after months of bitter conflicts over large delivery deficits.
The company immediately withdrew that it regretted the move and would defend itself “firmly” against litigation it considered “without merit”.
The European Commission announced on Monday that it had initiated legal action on its behalf and on behalf of the 27 EU member states.
“Some terms of the contract have not been met and the company has not been able to come up with a reliable strategy to ensure timely delivery of doses,” the commission said.
“What matters to us in this case is that we want to make sure that there is a prompt delivery of a sufficient number of doses that European citizens are entitled to and that have been promised on the basis of the contract,” he added.
AstraZeneca is likely to deliver no more than a third of the 300 million doses originally targeted in the EU supply contract by the end of June.
The company insisted it had “fully complied” with the supply agreement, under which it undertook to make “the best reasonable efforts” to meet the delivery targets.
“Vaccines are difficult to manufacture, as evidenced by the supply challenges facing several companies in Europe and around the world,” AstraZeneca said in a statement. “We are making progress in solving technical challenges and our production is improving, but the production cycle of a vaccine is very long, which means that these improvements take time to lead to an increase in finished vaccine doses.”
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