Quote:
Originally Posted by nomadking
If penalities were involved, I'm sure the EU would've said so by now.
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Apparently the contract is confidential, so we will likely never know unless the courts confirm that one way or the other.
We can only guess by the next steps.
---------- Post added at 13:22 ---------- Previous post was at 13:14 ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris
You’re still so determined to see this as a distasteful exercise in flag-waving I can’t help wondering if you’ve actually read the La Repubblica article yet. Reading and commenting on the substance of that would be more fruitful than continuing to try to make other people’s comments fit what you assume their agenda to be.
Pascal Soirot is French, and the company he leads is UK-Swedish. He makes the points most forcefully that this isn’t, in his view, a nationalistic issue, but simply a matter of contract. He gives a detailed explanation of his company’s position on that, which the EU has since refuted, but as there’s a confidentiality clause we may never be able to judge for ourselves.
It has only become a UK v EU issue in the last 24 hours because the EU’s health commissioner has insisted UK produced vaccines must be sent to the EU, in the full knowledge that the UK government would at some point be forced into defending its own contract with AstraZeneca. BoJo resisted answering direct questions on that last night, but they have come up with their Line To Take overnight and Michael Gove was tasked with getting that message out this morning. Even here it’s really not reasonable to perceive jingoistic flag waving - HMG is responding to comments the EU was fully aware would be incendiary.
This really ought to be an end to the issue because Soirot has been abundantly clear that he will not authorise export of UK product to the EU and the EU can’t compel him to do so. HMG has made its position clear; its ready to do what it can to help but this stops short of releasing product that has already been allocated to the UK’s vaccination schedule. So will the EU take the only reasonable option, and work directly with AstraZeneca to expedite improvements at its EU-based facilities, or will it now take steps to prevent Pfizer product leaving the EU for the UK?
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The EU can equally wave flags I'm not sure why you've interpreted it as a criticism one side and not the other.
I doubt the CEO or company are interested in flag waving they need to defend their positon. As I've said I believe that cold, hard, capitalism and what's actually in the contracts that's important not the headlines in the British press (or EU press for that matter).