The European Union urged Pharmaceutical Companies to comply with the Contracts signed for the supply of Coronavirus Vaccines

The president of the European Council, Charles Michel, has called on the pharmaceutical companies to fulfill the contracts signed on the supply of vaccines after a slowdown in the delivery of the committed doses. “We are going to make the pharmaceutical companies respect the contracts they have signed (…) by resorting to all the legal means at our disposal,” Michel told radio station Europe 1.

The american Pfizer last week announced a slowdown in supplys to implement improvements that would increase production and on Friday AstraZeneca also announced that it would not meet the agreed amounts due to a technical problem in the production.

Michel has not referred to specific measures or responses, but the EU will insist on transparency about the reasons for the delays and recalled that when Pfizer announced the first delays the EU managed to reduce them by taking a tough stance.

“We hit the table first and in the end the delays of several weeks announced became a reduction in the delivery rate,” he said.

Meanwhile, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has harshly criticized vaccine manufacturers for their slowness, which, in his opinion, is a “serious contractual violation that is causing enormous damage in Italy and other European countries.”

These delays “will have direct consequences on the lives and health of citizens and on our economic-social fabric, already under enormous pressure after a year of pandemic,” Conte said in a post published on his account. From Facebook.

“If the reduction of 60 percent of the doses to be distributed in the first quarter were confirmed, it would mean that 3.4 million doses would be delivered in Italy instead of 8 million,” lamented the prime minister, who has already given instructions to his Minister of Health, Roberto Speranza, to examine the possibility of taking legal measures against the companies.

“We will use all the tools and all legal initiatives, as we are already doing with Pfizer-BioNTech, to claim compliance with contractual commitments and to protect our community in every way,” Conte warned.

Italy is the country with the best vaccination rate in the EU, with 2.22 percent of the population already reached, followed by Germany (1.9 percent), France (1.55 percent). Globally, there are five countries ahead of Italy: Israel (39.8 percent), United Arab Emirates (24.5 percent), United Kingdom (9.3 percent), Bahrain (8.5 percent) and United States (6.2 percent).

Following Pfizer’s announced delays in COVID-19 vaccine deliveries, a similar announcement from AstraZeneca on Friday sparked concern and anger in Europe, which is racing against time as new, more dangerous variants of the coronavirus emerge.

The EU has signed a total of six contracts with pharmaceutical companies and is in negotiations with another two, for a total of 2.5 billion potential doses.