What's somewhat worse for the EU than their unified vaccine strategy going mammaries perpendicular is that the UK's is going swimmingly. The EU doesn't have any role, based in treaty, for this sort of action, and the last time there was a need for extra-treaty intervention (the financial crisis and Greek implosion) it took a lot of haggling and summitry to bring it about. This time of course the EU was smarting over Brexit and latched on to the vaccine procurement programme as a means of demonstrating the power of European unity. They have achieved the exact opposite.
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Originally Posted by jonbxx
David Allen Green has had a bit of a dive into the language used by AZ and the EU to see if we can understand where the issue in which is interesting - https://davidallengreen.com/2021/01/...ply-agreement/
My gut feeling? AZ sales signed up to something that manufacturing couldn't deliver either through enthusiasm or poor information. Buyers know that the demand will potentially outstrip supply and will do their damnedest to get clauses into contracts to secure their supplies. See it all the time in my industry - a jewellers eyepiece needed to go through those contracts and a wide view is needed to see what impact each contract will have on all the other ones you have on the go. |
I think it's very unlikely that the contract in this case was worked up by sales reps working in isolation from the manufacturing arm of the business (though I have been mired in those sorts of situations often enough). Given the gravity of the situation, this has got to have gone to the very top, where there are board members with oversight of the relevant parts of the business and the ability to answer questions as to the feasibility of what's being demanded.
In D A Green's analysis it still comes back to whether or not AstraZeneca's existing capacity in the UK can be regarded as part of the capacity from which it is obliged to deliver product to the EU. One comment from the EU that he seems to have missed is their attempt to claim that EU development funds have been used in the UK. This suggests to me that the EU thinks it can only claim a share of UK product on the basis that they helped fund its manufacture - i.e. the poduct's mere existence as part of AstraZeneca's capacity to supply is not enough.