The European Union published on Friday the contract signed with AstraZeneca for its anti-Covid vaccine, in order to recall the commitments made by the laboratory, after the announcement of production delays announced by the latter.

The European Union (EU) published on Friday the contract signed with AstraZeneca for its anti-Covid vaccine, in order to recall the commitments made by the laboratory, after the announcement of production delays announced by the latter.

The European executive urged the pharmaceutical group to publish this contract signed in August, bringing up to 400 million doses of this vaccine.

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The group "will do its best"

"We welcome the company's commitment to increased transparency (...) Transparency and accountability are important to strengthen the confidence of European citizens," commented a Commission spokesperson at a conference Press.

The forty-page contract, posted online by the Commission, is cut off from many passages deemed "confidential".

He expects the group to do "its best" to increase its production capacity.

"AstraZeneca is committed to making all reasonable efforts to build up capacity to produce 300 million doses of the vaccine without profit or loss," the text said, which mentions the option of EU to order 100 million additional doses.

"This 'do your best' clause only applied when it was not yet certain that a vaccine would be developed. Time has passed, the vaccine is there (...) and there are quantities extremely precise deliveries in the contract ", had underlined Friday morning the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, on the German radio Deutschlandfunk.

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"Reduced yield"

AstraZeneca has argued of a "drop in yield" on a European manufacturing site to explain being able to deliver in the first quarter only "a quarter" of the doses initially promised to the Twenty-Seven.

An explanation deemed "unsatisfactory" by the European Commission, which ordered an inspection of the Belgian industrial site concerned, managed by a subcontractor of the group.

According to the EU executive, the contract provides for production to take place at four factories, two in the EU and two in the UK - but these indications were not readable in the text released on Friday.

In an interview with certain media, the CEO of AstraZeneca, the French Pascal Soriot, had assured to have to reserve to the British the production of factories in the United Kingdom.

An argument strongly contested by Brussels: the contract specifies that factories located in the United Kingdom "must contribute to Astrazeneca's efforts to deliver vaccine doses to the EU," the Commission spokesperson stressed on Friday.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) is due to vote on the authorization of the Astrazeneca vaccine on Friday.