AstraZeneca contract must be published, says European Commission chief

No one would write a contract with "binding" delivery dates for fulfilment with anything other than penalty up to the sum of the sum of the contract's value. Furthermore the contract will always stipulate that external and incidental factors in the supply chain security and production process may impact delivery. There will be a clause. You cant force someone to give you something that doesn't exist. The UK paid AZ to protect a specific supply chain and onshore as much of it as possible.

Beyond that , with 80+ vaccines in development on top of existing vaccine production necessarily supply fulfilment was always going to need flexibility. The EU built little contingency into their vaccine strategy. The EU had not even approved the vaccine in question that they want delivery of.

This is childish politics from a bunch of over promoted people who are screaming blue murder when faced with the consequences their own incompetence.

Edit: The contract has been published

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_21_...

Exactly as i thought.

> WHEREAS, as part of that scale-up, AstraZeneca has committed to use its Best Reasonable Efforts (as defined below) to build capacity to manufacture 300 million Doses of the Vaccine, at no profit and no loss to AstraZeneca, at the total cost currently estimated to be Euros for distribution within the EU