The logo of the British-Swedish laboratory, AstraZeneca.
(illustration) -
ALLILI MOURAD / SIPA
The AstraZeneca laboratory says it can only deliver a quarter of the vaccines scheduled for the first quarter to the European Union.
Brussels does not believe the justifications of the lab.
The EU may have been a little "too optimistic" thinks Anne Sénéquier, co-director of the health observatory at Iris, interviewed by
20 Minutes
.
For the European Union, the dose is full.
Since the start of the week, everything that the European institutions have higher up has stepped up to denounce the non-compliance by the AstraZeneca laboratory of its commitment to deliver millions of doses of anti-Covid vaccines to the 27 Member States. 19 from this first trimester.
The tone is shown on Wednesday: Brussels demanded vaccines produced in the United Kingdom, based on its pre-order contract established last summer and AstraZeneca, invited to an explanatory meeting, declined before being represented there by its CEO in person.
20 Minutes
explains the controversy to you.
What has AstraZeneca announced?
The British-Swedish laboratory, which has developed a vaccine in partnership with the University of Oxford, has announced that it could only meet a quarter of the European Union's vaccine order in the first quarter of 2020. C 'is considerable: the EU has pre-ordered 400 million.
Undoubtedly not all deliverable this first quarter, but all the same: aside, the delay in delivery announced by Pfizer for its vaccine, a few weeks ago, seems very light.
Under pressure from the European Union, the American laboratory had also carried out the work of its Belgian factory well.
AstraZeneca justifies this delay by "a drop in yield" in one of its factories, also in Belgium.
For Pascal Soriot, the French CEO of AstraZeneca, it is the fault of the subcontractors, late because having to "learn" the vaccine production process.
Rather at ease, the boss explains that he is not in any case committed with the European Union: “It is not a contractual commitment.
We said: we will do our best, with no guarantee of success.
"
Good faith or not, we have to recognize that producing vaccines on such a scale and so quickly is a challenge.
"It's new," reminds
20 Minutes
Anne Sénéquier, co-director of health observatory at IRIS.
To eradicate polio, via mass vaccination, it had taken… thirty-two years.
In the case of the coronavirus "the laboratories all sold something that it did not have", explains Anne Sénéquier.
The risk was therefore known.
Why is the European Union angry?
Brussels is not convinced by the sudden drop in output of the Belgian factory.
According to AFP and the Belga agency, at the request of the European Commission, experts from the Belgian health regulator also inspected the Seneffe plant on Wednesday.
Their objective was to "ensure that the delay in delivery was indeed due to a production problem" on the site, and their report will be delivered within "a few days".
The EU is also asking to take advantage of the British AstraZeneca factories, which are not experiencing the crisis.
On Wednesday, a European official quoted by AFP recalled that, under the terms of the contract concluded by the EU, the laboratory had to use four factories to ensure its production - two in the EU and two in the United Kingdom.
“There was never any question of these two (British) factories being in the background or in reserve,” she insisted.
That's not what AstraZeneca says at all.
According to its CEO, the contract signed with London in June 2020, three months before the agreement with the EU, stipulates that production "from the British supply chain would first go to the United Kingdom".
No longer a member of the EU since January 2020, London has not benefited from the “wholesale price” that Brussels was able to negotiate with several laboratories.
But across the Channel, no delay.
"We must ensure that they do not favor the best-talented, and more particularly the United Kingdom, which pays more for its vaccines than the EU," warns LREM MEP Véronique Trillet-Lenoir in
Le Monde
.
Has the European Union been tricked?
AstraZeneca's justifications are struggling to convince, even beyond the diplomats of the European Union.
But it is hard to imagine that a CEO of a multinational company, loaded with legal advice, claims not to be "engaged" with the European Union without being sure of himself.
The EU has been "too optimistic, too sure of itself," suggests Anne Sénéquier.
But like all the countries that have signed bilateral agreements with the labs.
"Frédéric Bizard, professor of economics at ESCP and director of the Institut Santé, interviewed by
20 Minutes
, goes further and thinks that" the labs are less afraid of the EU than of the American state, of the British state or even German or French state.
The European Union is a political dwarf, it has no leverage and the balance of power is unbalanced.
"
The first controversy linked to the delays of the vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech had already given us a foretaste: the European Union and Canada have experienced delivery delays, but not the United States, the laboratory's parent company.
The episode we are experiencing is therefore not surprising for Frédéric Bizard: “AstraZeneca is in its role, it is a private company which seeks to maximize its profit by revealing only the most positive data, including on its production capacity.
"" We can see today that Westerners understand how powerful the labs are.
We have no voice in the chapter while we have invested billions, ”notes after
20 minutes
Jean François Corty, doctor and former director of operations of Doctors of the world.
What options now?
Seen as too inactive at the start of the health crisis, when health issues are not part of its prerogatives, the EU is playing part of its credibility on vaccines.
She had to show that playing together was playing winning.
But, industrially, the European Union has little chance of winning the showdown in the short term.
So "she can win the battle for public opinion," believes Anne Sénéquier.
The EU has already called on AstraZeneca to give permission to make the signed contract public.
“If that doesn't work, the EU can work on liberalizing pharmaceutical patents, which will allow other laboratories to manufacture the vaccine.
"
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