The EU, in pressing on AstraZeneca, is showing its teeth on the export of vaccines. From tomorrow onwards, the criteria of “reciprocity” and “proportionality” will also be evaluated to grant the green light to immunizers, or rather whether the path of serum exchanges with the recipient country runs in two directions, and at what point these are with the campaign immunization. Requests from pharmaceutical companies that do not honor contracts with the 27 will not get the green light. And the exemptions from controls for the low and middle-income countries of the Covax initiative, or for those in the neighborhood, in all over 120, will be canceled.
A trick, the latter, to have greater clarity on the final goal of all the shots departing from the Union and avoid the risk that any European stops are bypassed, or that immunizers end up on the black market. “No export ban” pointed out the Community Vice President Maros Sefcovic, trying to reassure those countries that like Holland, Belgium or Ireland look at restrictions on the free market like smoke in the eyes, fearing the triggering of trade wars. But certainly this is a crackdown that leaves much more room for maneuver for the EU, to make sure that Big Pharmas go straight into the second quarter, avoiding a hemorrhage of transfers abroad behind the promise of delays from recover in the following months. Because with half of Europe in lockdown, and in the throes of the peaks of the infections of the third wave of Covid, Sefcovic underlined, “vaccines are needed now. The initiative of the EU Commission, which follows an emergency procedure, will enter into force immediately after its adoption and its publication in the European Official Journal. In case of disagreement, the Member States will be able to dismantle it by qualified majority, a posteriori. But Sefcovic points out that the executive is in constant contact with the heads of state and government, and there should be no surprises. Even if the proof will only come at the summit on Thursday, when Ursula Von der Leyen will talk about it with the leaders, perhaps in the wake of some positive news about AstraZeneca’s surpluses from US President Joe Biden, who will participate in the videoconference. In the last few hours, Chancellor Angela Merkel has made it known that she is opposed to a ban on indiscriminate exports, but to support von der Leyen. And even the French Secretary of State for European Affairs, Clément Beaune reiterated: “AstraZeneca mobilize the British plants for us too, otherwise we will block their exports, as Italy has done”.
The immediate focus is on AstraZeneca and the United Kingdom. Due to the non-compliance of the Oxford company, which has already cut deliveries to 70 million doses for the second quarter, despite the 180 foreseen by the contract, Brussels is determined to go ahead through legal channels, the EU vaccine negotiator warned. Sandra Gallina. While Boris Johnson tried to throw water on the fire and reach out, at least in words, to the 27. “We are all fighting the same battle in Europe and in much of the world, we need international collaboration. We will continue to collaborate with our European partners ». In fact, in London the fears that the 27 could put their hands on drastic solutions, such as the use of the bazooka clause of Article 122 with which to block the export of all vaccines, are there. For the UK, the main recipient of serums from the EU, especially Pfizer, it would be a big problem. It is no coincidence that the British ambassador Tim Barrow, former Brexit negotiator, arrived in Brussels to negotiate on the export of the doses produced by a subcontractor of AstraZeneca, the Dutch factory of Halix. The site, which should have EMA’s approval for the EU market from Thursday, has 10 million doses in stock that London is demanding but now says it is willing to “partially surrender” to the Union.