The contract clearly says they're to make their "best reasonable effort" to satisfy this contract. Breaking previous contracts would be unreasonable.

There are so many things the EU could do here that could help: - Provide more resource to AZ to get more facilities up and running. - Offer to sell some of that future ramped up production back to countries like the UK in exchange for getting some vaccines now. - Expedite the approval process of other vaccines. - Allow member states to negotiate indepently.

What did they choose to do? Raid the EU vaccine production facilties, and threaten legal action against the very company trying to supply them the vaccine. Like yeah, that's really going to help people.

The UK government directly paid for the research and development of the AZ vaccine, and paid for the manufacturing facilities in the UK to be built, when there was a lot of pressure to simply partner with US firms. Where was the EU when this was happening? Why didn't the EU take it upon themselves to do the same thing?

The presumptiveness of the EU to dictate that AZ should redirect UK vaccines to the EU is astounding.

To me reading the contract as a non-lawyer, the BRE conditions felt like game, set and match to AZ.

For one thing, the definition of "best reasonable efforts" does seem to be ambiguous, but evidently it's intended to relate to what a business comparable to AZ would be expected to do. It seems unreasonable to expect that a large, multinational business manufacturing essential drugs during a public health crisis would knowingly and deliberately breach an existing contract to supply a fixed number of doses on a fixed schedule to another party, which is what AZ reportedly has with the UK.

On top of that, there is the discrepancy between 5.1 and 5.4. The latter says the UK counts as "within the EU" while talking about manufacturing at sites located within the EU, but it also explicitly says the inclusion of the UK is only for that specific clause. Clause 5.1 is specifically about the initial doses and requires AZ to use its BREs to manufacture the initial doses within the EU with no such including-the-UK qualifier.

So it appears that, contractually, AZ is actively required to make BRE to manufacture the initial doses for the EU not in the UK, and in any case, unless there is something very strange hidden in the censored wording, the obligations relating to delivery are also covered by a BRE qualifier.

Presumably this will all end up being decided in court, probably long after it really matters for anything other than financial compensation, but on a first reading by this layperson, it does look like AZ have the stronger case here.

- approval timing;

- contract celebration date;

Has anything to do with the fact that AZ is failing to comply with it's duties.

AZ isn't waiting for EU approval to start producing stock to fulfill their initial order, that makes no sense - it takes WEEKS to build stock for the goal of the 80 million doses. The stock that will be delivered, 30% of what was expected, is being produced before this approval. So this "approval process" argument makes no sense.

Regarding the contract celebration date, same applies - they were expected to deliver 80 million doses in a timeframe, which they agreed upon.

Why don't we do this the other way around, why don't we all be transparent and see if they are also failing to supply the UK? Because if it's supply issues, then it should be a problem of both countries no?

Or they were shifting stock made in Europe to fulfill UK orders?

I really hope the EU gets to the bottom of this, because it stinks.

The timeline:

- The UK paid for research and development of a new vaccine.

- The UK pre-ordered X amount of vaccine.

- AZ began setting up facilities in the UK to manufacture X amount of vaccine

- Three months later, the EU pre-orders Y amount of vaccine.

- AZ begins setting up EU plants to produce Y amount of vaccine. If you check the contract, the EU specifically says that the plants must be built in the EU, and that AZ would need special permission to use UK plants, so of course AZ are not going to reserve extra capacity in the UK for this contract.

- The EU plants suffered problems ramping up production, in large part because the shorter schedule set by the EU.

The provisioning for the EU contract has nothing to do with the prior UK contract. There's nothing that "stinks" here, only poor planning on behalf of the EU bureaucracy and a sprinkle of bad luck. Had the EU not stipulated that the plants be built in the EU, AZ would have likely been able to provision more capacity more quickly. Had the EU placed their order earlier, there would have been more time for AZ to resolve the issues in the EU plants. Had the EU responded to the drop in production by asking for assistance from the UK, or by attempting to assist AZ, instead of throwing its weight around, I would have a lot more sympathy.

The EU, in its slowness to react, has actively harmed its member nations, and is now looking for a scapegoat (AZ) to blame to avoid the repurcussions.

So the UK is getting orders from EU, and from the UK, and the EU should sit and watch a company not complying to their duties while the block production capacity is being used to fulfill orders for USA, UK, Isreal, and many other parts of the world...

While the UK and USA have their production capacity only for themselves AND still get production from Europe.

To top that off AZ is failing to fulfill EU orders because they are using EU capacity to deliver to UK?

Basically USA and UK want all production for themselves AND also production from other countries, while everyone else should sit and watch because the concept of "best effort" only applies if it's not failing the UK contract.

So something isn't adding up here, and yes, it fucking stinks. I hope they block all vaccines exports until EU deadlines/stock is replentished.

First, that was only the initial vaccines. All vaccines since then were produced entirely within the UK. Second, the UK paid for the development of those vaccines, the EU did not. Without the UK funding and the collaboration with Oxford, AZ was not even planning to develop its own vaccine variant, and so those facilities would not have been producing any vaccine at all.

> While the UK and USA have their production capacity only for themselves AND still get production from Europe.

As mentioned, the UK and USA paid to develop these products. The EU is expecting everyone else to pay the cost of development, and then just get the vaccine at cost when it arrives, and still have priority?

> So something isn't adding up here, and yes, it fucking stinks. I hope they block all vaccines exports until EU deadlines/stock is replentished.

Good luck with that. All the vaccine manufacturers are suffering shortfalls, and the UK is not reliant on exports from the EU. I hope that further vaccine production goes to countries that didn't have the economic means to build their own vaccine supply, rather than those too short-sighted to build one.

Well, then why not disclose those figures like EU is asking? If it was only the initial order, how many doses of it? How many are currently be produced?

The EU paid whatever it had to pay to have 80 million doses in February, because that was the deal. Instead they are to receive 30 million, with little to no transparency around why and how many doses are being moved out of Europe.

>As mentioned, the UK and USA paid to develop these products. The EU is expecting everyone else to pay the cost of development, and then just get the vaccine at cost when it arrives, and still have priority?

The EU also upfront money, to the point that AZ established a timeline and a number of vaccines to be delivered - 80 million doses by Feb. Or now some contracts have more value than others? Why doesn't the UK release their contract to the public then?

The reality is that maybe EU should have locked production to EU like UK and USA apparently did. It's all "let's end the pandemic together" but apparently UK and USA want to deal with their problem first and let the rest of the world make vaccines for them.

>Good luck with that. All the vaccine manufacturers are suffering shortfalls, and the UK is not reliant on exports from the EU. I hope that further vaccine production goes to countries that didn't have the economic means to build their own vaccine supply, rather than those too short-sighted to build one.

Well now that the first batches that came from EU are delivered (and god only knows how many, because there's no transparency) it's easy to say that you don't need EU production. Until the UK had no production it was good to receive from EU, now that it has some capacity you don't need it more?

Yeah, really hope EU starts to crackdown on this. Either everyone contributes, or sanctions and restrictions should start to be applied.

There's a big difference between paying for a vaccine to be developed, and paying for a developed vaccine to be manufactured.

The EU only did the latter (and at the bare minimum price...) Other countries did the former.

> The reality is that maybe EU should have locked production to EU

They did, just read the contract. It's not about locking production, it's about paying for development.

As an analogy: let's say you designed a new mobile phone, and you sent those designs off to a chinese company to manufacture. The deal is that after filling your order, the chinese company can continue manufacturing the product and sell it to other potential buyers in china. Is it surprising that your order should be filled before those of the other potential buyers?

The other buyers had the opportunity to come up with their own designs. They could even have split the cost of developing those designs with you. They didn't do either of those things. Now that manufacturing has hit a short-fall, they don't have a leg to stand on.

You're just making up something to try to justify it, where it says no where that deal.

AZ was the one that said it will sell at price of cost.

AZ was the one that agreed that it would fulfill EU orders from outside EU production.

AZ was the one who agreed that no other contract would compromise EU supply.

If AZ had to take into consideration contract celebration dates, development costs participation, and what ever else you're saying that makes you claim that AZ is entitled to breach the contract - then THEY SHOULD HAVE PLACED THAT IN THE CONTRACT.

Maybe EU would have looked at other alternatives, or made the required adjustments.

AZ has different contracts with different countries and they don't want to disclose that some contracts are being prioritized over others, and putting themselves on the breach of EU contract.