The European Commission is working in a lawsuit against AstraZeneca (AZN.L) after the drug manufacturer cut off COVID-19 vaccine deliveries to the European Union, sources familiar with the matter have reported.
The move would be a further step in an EU plan to break ties with the Anglo-Swedish pharmacist after the company repeatedly had supplies on the block, which would contribute to significant delays in the deployment of vaccines in Europe.
News of the legal case was first reported on Thursday by Politico. An EU official involved in talks with drug manufacturers confirmed that the EU was preparing to sue the company.
“EU states must decide whether (they will participate). It is about meeting deliveries by the end of the second quarter,” the official said.
The matter was discussed on Wednesday at a meeting with EU diplomats, the official and a diplomat said. Politico, citing five unnamed European diplomats, reported that most EU countries told the meeting they would support suing the company.
“What matters is to ensure the delivery of a sufficient number of doses in accordance with the company’s previous commitments,” an EU Commission spokesman said. “Together with the member states, we are studying all the options for this to happen.”
There was no immediate response from AstraZeneca to a request for comment on Thursday.
Brussels in March sent a legal letter to the company in the first step of a possible legal proceeding.
When the deadline for a response expired this month, a Commission spokesman said the matter was discussed at a meeting with AstraZeneca, but the EU was still asking the company for further clarification on “several outstanding points”.
The spokesman did not go into detail, but details of the letter published by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera show that the EU was seeking clarification on what it considered a delayed application to the EU regulator for approval of the vaccine.
Brussels also questioned how AstraZeneca spent more than € 224 million ($ 270 million) granted by the EU in September to buy vaccine ingredients and for which the company had not provided enough documents to confirm purchases. .
Under the contract, the company had pledged to make its “best reasonable efforts” to administer 180 million doses of vaccine to the EU in the second quarter, for a total of 300 million in the period from December to June.
But the company said in a statement on March 12 that it would aim to deliver only a third. The EU letter was sent a week after that statement.
Under the contract, the parties agreed that the Belgian courts would be responsible for resolving unresolved disputes.
The EU has already decided not to take an option to buy an additional 100 million doses of AstraZeneca under the contract, an EU official said after supply delays and security concerns over very rare cases of related blood clots with the vaccine.
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