A dispute broke out in January 2021 between the European Commission and the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca AB about the provision of COVID-19 vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic, and, in February, spilled out into a dispute over Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol. Vaccination proceeded apace in the UK but more slowly in the EU, and by the end of March 2021, over 30% of the UK population had received at least one dose of vaccine compared to about 8% of the EU population. This was partly due to limited availability of the AstraZeneca vaccine in the EU. The World Health Organization and the European Medicines Agency continued to state that the vaccine was safe and effective. However, a representative of the European Medicines Agency said in June that vaccines based on the mRNA technology should be preferred if available for all age groups, including for the over 60s.
Background
In anticipation that a successful vaccine against COVID-19 would be developed, various countries pre-ordered doses of vaccine from the organisations doing research. The United Kingdom pre-ordered 100 million doses of the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine candidate by May 2020, through AstraZeneca UK Limited. While in parallel offering UK taxpayer-funded grants to vaccine manufacturers, in the UK and EU, to increase capacity, including approximately £21 million of UK funding for the Halix plant in the Netherlands, according to a report in the Daily Telegraph. in advance of the clinical trials of the Oxford vaccine candidate. The EU denied that the Halix plant had received any UK government funding. The US Government, and WHO COVAX programme placed similar conditional pre-orders, for 600 million doses of the Oxford vaccine candidate, in the following weeks, with the US administration offering $1.2 bn in funding for development, and clinical trials of the candidate. The EU made a 336 million euro downpayment to Astrazeneca in August to cover development, liability and other costs incurred by the vaccine maker. The Swedish subsidiary, AstraZeneca AB, reached a preliminary agreement, on 13 June, with the short lived Inclusive Vaccines Alliance, a group made up of France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, to supply up to 400million doses for the club of four. This Inclusive Vaccine Alliance was meant as the first step towards a collaborative EU approach to vaccine procurement, and subsequently the national health ministers mandated the EU commission to take over. In the past, the European Union member states had decided on their own health policies, but during the summer of 2020, Brussels therefore took charge of vaccine procurement in what Ursula von der Leyen called a "European Health Union". Member states could opt out of this, from the centralised EU procurement process, but none initially did, except for Hungary. Negotiating on behalf of the whole EU, the European Commission signed a deal with AstraZeneca AB, on 27 August 2020.
The European Union was generally slow in signing their vaccine contracts because they were demanding producer liability if something goes wrong and wanted to conduct a rolling-review process (leading to ordinary regulatory approval) rather than an emergency authorisation. The priority of the European Medicines Agency and of the individual member states was not speed but to build public confidence in the safety of the vaccines and the mass vaccination process. However, the European governments conceded some immunity to AstraZeneca and to pay potential claims above an agreed limit, and this was different from the contract they made, for example, with EU-based Sanofi.
An analysis by Isaac and Deutsch in Politico Europe indicate the UK involvement began with a £65 million grant to Oxford University in April 2020 to develop a production plan for their vaccine which evolved into a binding agreement in May 2020 with AstraZeneca UK Limited. This agreement related to UK supply and became the basis for the formal UK contract signed on 28 August 2020, a day after the EU contract, with the Swedish subsidiary. The contract with the UK subsidiary differs from the EU Contract, with the Swedish subsidiary, in that the UK contract is under English law, rather than the Belgium law specified in the EU contract, and having more specific details on key points that relate to interruptions in UK supply. The two contracts with the EU and the UK both included ″best effort″ clauses.