Incidentally, that Novavax vaccine is also going to be produced in the UK. They expect to manufacture 180 million doses of which the UK government ordered 60 million back in August last year. The EU? They hope to place an order soon having been in talks for months.
Gotta be the clubhouse leaders for the 2021 Biggest Pieces of Shit of the Year Award…
edit… on a personal note, this is not seen here as an “EU -UK thing”, or a " vaccine war" or whatever it is called now in the UK. This is in stark contrast to the british media and also on this forum. Here in the EU the UK is barely mentioned and it is only about Astra Zeneca.
Just saying
Well, someone’s going to look like a cunt. It would be practically unheard of for such an agreement not to include a phrase like “best efforts/endeavours” or “reasonable best efforts/endeavours”.
Maybe you should take that up with Stella Kyriakides.
Too right, it’s about being undercut by 61% which is criminal!
I listened to the interview. She did not say ‘The phrase ‘best effort’ does not exist’. She specified to what it applies. Confirms that the contract specifically mentions two UK factories.
So you’re saying that the tweets posted by Livvy are misleading?
I wouldn’t be surprised if the contract does reference the UK sites but it would need to go considerably further than that for the EU to have a claim on what has been referred to as a dedicated production line for the UK.
Yes. She never said that sentence, although the dude put it in quotation marks.
Crazy. Why do so many journalists simply not report things accurately anymore?
You mentioned that she specified what it applied to. Do you remember in what way?
“AstraZeneca has also explicitly assured us in this contract that no other obligations would prevent the contract from being fulfilled,” she added.
Ms von der Leyen said the “best-effort” cause was only valid as long as it was not clear whether AstraZeneca could develop a vaccine. She also said there was no “order sequencing” stipulation and it mentioned four production sites, two of which are in Britain.
So not what she was reported to have said by the tweets you posted earlier.
The AZ APA must be fairly significantly different to the Curevac one if what she’s saying is correct. I repeat though, a best efforts clause only applicable to development and not approval, production and delivery would be unheard of.
The thing is what did the EU expect?
They knew the UK already had a contract (even if they did not know the terms)
I strongly doubt they negotiated with the understanding that their contract should have priority over other customers.
Given the scale of the task (not just developing vaccine) but rolling out biggest vaccine in history. I very much doubt best efforts does not include delivery. It would nuts if it didn’t. I am pretty sure any judge would agree.
Is anyone on the EU side starting to question the position of anyone involved on their end yet?
Let´s wait and see, the contracts will be published today so everyone can see what’s in it.
I could see a contract from this government including such terms
“Contracted to provide PPE to the best of your ability”
The BBC’s Berlin correspondent.
Quite a queue forming for that title. Most of them seem to be better off as well.