BRUSSELS (AP) – The European Union on Friday introduced stricter rules on COVID-19 vaccine exports that could affect shipments to countries like the United Kingdom, deepening the dispute with London over the scant supply of potentially saving vaccines.
But amid protests in Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom, the European Commission has made it clear that the new measure will not trigger controls on shipments of vaccines produced in the 27-country bloc to the small territory bordering the United Kingdom, which it borders with EU member Ireland.
According to the post-Brexit agreement, EU products must still be able to travel unhindered from the bloc to Northern Ireland.
“In the process of finalizing this measure, the Commission will ensure that the Ireland / Northern Ireland Protocol is not affected,” said the EU’s executive arm in a statement on Friday.
In the midst of a dispute with Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and British leader Boris Johnson received an unexpected phone call, during which the UK Prime Minister “expressed his serious concerns about the potential impact of the measures taken by the EU today on vaccine exports could have, ”says a statement from the British government.
The EU revealed its plans to tighten rules on exports of coronavirus vaccines produced within the bloc amid fears that some of the doses it obtained from AstraZeneca could be diverted elsewhere. The measure could be used to block remittances to many non-EU countries and ensure that any EU-based exporting company will first have to present its plans to national authorities.
The governments of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland immediately attacked the measure, saying that the bloc invoked an emergency clause in its divorce agreement with Britain to introduce controls on exports to Northern Ireland. Goods must move freely between the EU and Northern Ireland, according to special agreements for the UK region, designed to protect the peace process on the island of Ireland.
But the EU later said it was not invoking Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol, allowing either party to nullify parts of its agreement.
“The Commission is not triggering the safeguard clause,” she said in her statement, adding that the restrictive regulations have not yet been finalized and will not be adopted before Saturday.
The phone call between Von der Leyen and Johnson somewhat eased what was quickly becoming a point of diplomatic conflict.
“We agree with the principle that there should be no restrictions on the export of vaccines by companies that fulfill contractual responsibilities,” von der Leyen said in a statement.
The EU attacked AstraZeneca this week after the company said it would provide only 31 million doses of the vaccine in initial shipments, instead of the 80 million doses it hoped to deliver. Brussels said AstraZeneca would provide even less than that, just a quarter of the doses scheduled between January and March – and member countries started to complain.
The European Commission is concerned that doses destined for Europe may have been diverted from an AstraZeneca plant on the mainland to the United Kingdom, where two other company facilities are located. The EU also wants doses in two locations in Britain to be made available to European citizens.
“The UK has legally binding agreements with vaccine suppliers and does not expect the EU, as a friend and ally, to do anything to stop compliance with these contracts,” said the UK.
AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot told the German newspaper Die Welt this week that the UK government helped create the vaccine developed with the University of Oxford and signed its contract three months before the EU. Soriot said that, according to the British contract, vaccines produced in UK units must go to the UK first.
To avoid similar disputes and dispel fears that vaccines may be diverted, the Commission has introduced measures to tighten the rules on exports of shots produced in EU countries. The “vaccine export transparency mechanism” will be used at least until the end of March to control shipments to countries outside the EU.
The EU insisted that it is not an export ban, although it could be used to block shipments to the United Kingdom or many other non-EU countries. Many poorer nations and close neighbors are exempt.
Officials said the objective is to ensure that EU member countries receive the injections they have purchased from producers. The World Health Organization criticized the new EU export rules as “useless”.
Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and other WHO officials have warned of supply chain disruptions that could spread around the world and potentially paralyze the fight against COVID-19.
The “advance purchase agreement” with the EU was signed in August, before the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was properly tested. The European Medicines Agency approved the vaccine on Friday, making it the third authorized for use by EU countries.
Previously, the 27-nation bloc and AstraZeneca have made public a heavily edited version of their vaccine agreement that is at the center of a dispute over the delivery schedule.
The contract, signed last year between the European Commission and the pharmaceutical company, allows EU member countries to purchase 300 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, with an option of another 100 million doses. It is one of several contracts that the EU’s executive arm has with vaccine manufacturers to guarantee a total of more than 2 billion vaccines.
As part of an “advance purchase agreement” with companies, the EU said it invested 2.7 billion euros ($ 3.8 billion), including 336 million ($ 408 million) to finance AstraZeneca’s serum production in four factories.
Much of the 41-page document made public has been deleted, making it very difficult to establish which side is right. Details on the price of the vaccine have been remarkably written. The UK is believed to be paying far more for the vaccine than EU countries.
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Associated Press writers Danica Kirka in London, Nicole Winfield in Rome, Jamey Keaten in Geneva and Thomas Adamson in Paris contributed to this report.