I am surprised by the polarization and demonization of the EU they are promoting. Was not expecting that from BBC. And then they wonder why British people voted for Brexit.
That said, my sympathy for the EU (as an opponent of Brexit) has been diminished by their attempted bullying behaviour.
They initially wanted the UK in on their EU procurement. Unlike the EU members of the grouping we were to be excluded from any say in the vaccines chosen, the quantities, the pricing, the manufacturing, and the distribution. No say on anything; take what you're given. They left us with no choice but to do our own deals.
We did those deals faster and with less guarantees at that early stage, fronted virtually the whole cost of the AstraZeneca UK production, accepted liability rather than insisting (as per the EU) that the vaccine makers did, and paid much more, just to get a faster agreement (and we still had the same teething issues the EU are facing now; we weren't special in that regard). Despite all that risk, up front cost, higher prices, and accepted liability, the EU is now demanding that the instant they approve the vaccine they can dip into the supply that has cost the UK far more than most people realise we gave up in order to get that swift delivery.
The EU stumbled by not realising the urgency last year, then stumbled again by badly insulting the UK with the EU procurement "offer" terms which forced us to negotiate separately.
I have a great amount of sympathy for the EU people (I may not be in the EU any more, but I'm still European) but none of this is the doing of the UK - who are simply carrying on using the vaccines delivered - and the first 'shot' at actual vaccine nationalism has been fired not by the mad brexiteers but by the EU with their Northern Ireland border statements and not-export-control-really new 'monitoring' and 'agreement' position.
I really expected coming into this year to find myself part of a massive UK villain state facing a more reasonable EU. I didn't foresee a desparate EU attacking a UK just going about it's own business.
The EU bungled this and it would not be fair if we were to bully our way out of it.
It's sad to see this being a zero sum game, and no way you cut it people are going to suffer (already are) somewhere.
I was expecting a bit more decency on our side. Shattered superiority complex after Brits mismanaged Brexit, maybe?
Our lack of coordination and flailing in this regard is equally impressive.
I am not saying EU was/is always right, as they don't seem to be right in this case, but I was just hoping that BBC would be more subtle about it. I am totally fine with UK/AstraZeneca pushing back hard.
Just don't see the need for BBC to turn it to a "us vs them" thing. I think I am still living in denial in regards to Brexit. I guess I will have to get used to it.
I'm a EU citizen and I'm with you on this one. Also, I now realise (meaning after Brexit has been actually put in place) that the officials in Bruxelles could have been more forthcoming towards us, the remaining EU citizens, about how UK's exit will effect us. All I was hearing were things like "those dastardly British, they'll pay for it!" while now one cannot receive a package from a relative or close friend in the UK without being flooded with customs forms to fill, to say nothing of the extra money one has to pay for the privilege.
About the vaccin buy-in, I never heard that story, but I might be one-sided here. I listened from the Brexit side of the media and the final argument was officially 'they did not receive the email (three times)' The unofficial assumption was that the UK wanted to prove something on their own. This time it worked out, both from securing the vaccins and delivering them. (Good on them, less people dying is a good thing in my book) But the different risk appetite I imagine hard to replicate to the continent, see the German advise for az vaccins above 65.
You're right the expected pre production did not happen, and we can talk all year about what happened. And the UK, approving it sooner, but also in a worse situation, could dip in first. The way forward is to find a fair balance in sharing these resources again, until the issues are solved. Maybe by vaccination degree of the vulnerable, maybe by population size, maybe recognising the UK ordered about 2 dosis per capita, and the EU only 1.
I heard AZ offered 39 million in q1 and the commission not yet being satisfied. But if we're talking numbers, we can get some way out. I just hope the export ban threat or the article 16 hasn't damaged too much.
That's imo a narrative from AZ pitting EU against UK, fueled by a susceptible UK media. US articles on this appear a little more measured. Is the EU attacking the UK? I think they are attacking AZ. It is an utter shame how this is turning political, and there are no excuses for the debacle wrt N. Ireland.
Having said this, as I wrote in a different comment, the way I currently understand the situation is that EU demands AZ proportionally reduce fulfillment of orders given their production problems. AZ would thus have to also breach their contract with UK on top of the breach of contract with the EU. AZ pushes the "first come first serve" logic of UK having ordered 3 months sooner, and the UK media, also the left leaning outlets, know that their readers are starved for some news that at least SOMETHING worked in the UK after the recent mess and gobble this narrative up. I don't know if the logic of who orders first gets deliveries first applies in these kind of contracts (IANAL), but I suspect it does not. If it does not, the EU seems to demand something from AZ that they want to avoid, but not attack the UK.
I find it extremely hard to navigate the media on this as it is a disgraceful, loaded, dishonest, political shouting match. Instead it should all be about how to best combat the pandemic of course.
This is why when britain passed 100,000 coronavirus deaths, with the worst death rate in the world, nobody resigned, and nobody called for anybody to resign.
The BBC is part of this kind of tight, teflon kernel that's at the heart of why the UK is such a dysfunctional country these days.
This is very true, I chatted at length with my neighbor who lived his entire life in the UK(up to a few years ago) and was shocked how stratified the society is. Basically there is small group of people(who went to Eton, are lords or knighted, from famous families) that form a clique that runs everything in the country. No matter how much money you make or how successful you are, you can never join that circle.
An example was told to me that even David Beckham (famous soccer star) is looked down upon by that segment and does not associate with them and could never join that part of society.
Your mate is also massively over-egging how bad it is, there is still an Eton clique (the present/last government being a good example), but we've had a range of recent prime minister's educated normally, outside of the Eton clique. Brown, Blair, even Thatcher just went to a Grammar school (generally a better school you have to pass exams to qualify for, which is semi-meritocratic, though gamed by the rich)
Our election system is even worse than America's though so we keep getting conservative governments who win 40-45% of the popular vote but somehow get landslide majorities.
Also, what do you mean by "small", it's got 70 million inhabitants. At worst a country with a population of a size of France and Germany might be called "medium".
There isn't "the" Man. Why would there be when even positions of petty power are contested for so tightly and dirtily and there are so many striving to rise? Consequences are not a strong deterrent - if they were the world would look very different.
Wealthy individuals may have power but nobody has control over the a process of contention across all layers with nominal goals served imperfectly with cargo-culting and skewed priorities.
All of this and there is nothing inherently special about the people - human nature and control oppose each other.
In the UK, I think Eton is more a symptom than a cause. The problem is, London is a world-class city that concentrates the entire political and financial establishment. It's also a city with very obvious parallel worlds, where if you move in certain circles, you meet the same people, so while it is a massive city, it sometimes feels quite small.
To me, the worst part is not that both Johnson and Cameron went to the same school, the same university, or even the same exclusive dining club - the bad bit is that because any given person with political, social or economic power in the UK is so closely connected with any other, there's a real incentive not to rock the boat. You get an enormous amount of cohesion, because if you go around making enemies, you're ultimately making things awkward for a lot of your friends and acquaintances.
On top of that, the fact most people in this world have similar backgrounds makes a lot of them 'on the same page' by default.
Can you explain more about this? Is the UK heavily gerrymandered?
EDIT: It's an honest question. I don't know anything about UK politics, other than that it's a parliamentary constitutional monarchy.
No it isn’t gerrymandered. And if it is very slightly accidentally gerrymandered in some places, that works against the Conservatives - Labour MPs often have smaller constituencies.
So no that’s not relevant or part of what is being talked about here.
The reality is that 43% popular vote for a single party in a system with four major parties, 10 percentage points more than their nearest rival, is nothing but an enormous popular vote landslide. The Conservatives are popular amongst broad sections of society, incomes, ethnicities, regions. All other parties serve limited niches so are fundamentally constrained.
Why don’t they form a coalition? Well I’m not sure they really have deeply shared values to do that. Many struggle to share values internally!
You're right that there is comparatively little gerrymandering in the UK, but the political decision of how many members of parliament there should be does have a partisan bias. The Conservatives had planned to reduce the number of seats in parliament, which would have the effect of making each constituency (district) bigger and thus more rural. They had to abandon that scheme, though, after enough of their own MPs feared that their constituency would disappear from the map. There are still other controversial redistricting plans in the works though.[0]
> The reality is that 43% popular vote for a single party ... is nothing but an enormous popular vote landslide.
As I responded above, this is more attributable to vote splitting between parties that are much more similar to each other than they are to the Conservatives, and that collectively enjoy a greater share of public support, not to mention the feelings of tactical voters and non-voters who feel disenfranchised due to living in a "safe seat".
A more meaningful figure would be that the median Conservative MP was voted for by only 37% of eligible voters (in the 2019 general election), although both that number and your 43% are less than the popular vote share received by the loser of the 2020 US presidential election.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jun/02/uk-governme...
My neighbors wife knew Eddie Redmayne and his brother(I think both went to Eton) and although she said they were nice, they were in a totally different world and only really associated with people who also went to Eton/had large trustfunds. In England you would never see people like Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, Steve Jobs etc who came from middle class families move to the highest strata of society and be accepted by those in that highest strata.
I am by no means bashing England, I think the country is awesome and have family that lives there, I am just not keen on the stratified nature of its society.
Old money vs new miney strife is an age old thing and I can assure you none of the tech barons is rubbing shoulders with former barons let alone American gentry.
In a system with four major parties, 43% is an absolutely huge popular landslide. How can you describe it as anything else? Ten percentage points above their nearest rival? How much more of a majority do you think it could possibly be?
Perhaps you've heard of the problem of "vote splitting":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_splitting
> How much more of a majority do you think it could possibly be?
Well, try 51% for a start.
What vote do you think is being split? Some kind of generic not-Conservative vote? People vote for other parties - they aren't split among a vote not for the Conservatives.
If it really were simple vote splitting then coalitions would form, and they don't - because the other parties aren't a simple platform of not-Conservative and they disagree with each other as much as they disagree with the Conservatives. In fact one of the only two parties to successfully coalesce was the Conservatives!
As a concrete example - the second choice in most parts of Scotland isn't Labour, it's Conservative. Are the Conservatives and Labour splitting the not-SNP vote? If you think that then is any party that stands except the ruling party a vote splitter? Seems a silly definition to me.
> Well, try 51% for a start.
An absolute popular majority? I don't think that's realistic and it would be extremely unhealthy if that was the case.
I think there are a few factors that make things more nuanced than "People vote for other parties". As I mentioned in another comment, FPTP leads to constituencies where people feel that their vote doesn't count, so they either don't vote at all or vote for the "lesser of two evils", which both inflates the support for the Conservatives and also prevents new parties from gaining traction.
> If it really were simple vote splitting then coalitions would form, and they don't
That's a great point, but actually the UK has seen informal coalitions with parties standing down candidates in specific seats. This idea is so entrenched in British politics that it even has its own Wikipedia article.[0] The fact that the Conservatives have been the only major party since WW2 to form a coalition government is mostly due to the fact that in other general elections, the party with the most seats hasn't needed to form a coalition (perhaps with the exception of 1974), and it would make even less sense for the opposition parties to form one.
> Are the Conservatives and Labour splitting the not-SNP vote?
If you look at the 2016 Scottish Parliament election[1] (which uses a voting system that rewards honesty better), the Conservatives and Labour received 44.6% of the constituency vote, combined. That is less than the 46.5% that the SNP received. Even if you add the constituency vote share of the fourth largest party (by seats won), Scottish Green, they still don't match the success of the SNP. In any case, vote splitting is not such a concern under the Additional Members System.
> An absolute popular majority?
I apologise if my "51%" comment was unhelpful. You asked "How much more of a majority do you think it could possibly be?" and I wanted to highlight the fact that 43% isn't any kind of majority at all, but maybe you meant "plurality". In any case, I agree that it would probably be a bad sign if a party had a majority of the popular vote, and I would say it can also be a bad sign if a party gets a majority of seats without a majority of votes. Big parties effectively tend to be coalitions within themselves anyway, so I would prefer if the dynamics of those coalitions were played out on the national political stage, rather than as internal party scheming.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_alliance_%28UK%29#...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Scottish_Parliament_elect...
The left would clearly win the last election, but because of FPP and gerrymandering in the UK, that's been going on for decades, they don't.
It's one of the reasons they don't sort the house of lords, as the likely solution would be representative which would basically permanently end the Conservatives being elected for anything.
I've voted Red, Blue and Yellow over the years, so this isn't bias, I'm just tired of the latest batch of blue as they are utterly incompetent and part of the reason is the present, completely stacked, British electoral system.
If they could do this they'd form a coalition and form a government, but they don't.
Why do you think that is?
Because they don't really share many ideals, principles, or policies. You can look at them and call many of them 'left', but other than that they're not really compatible. Some are nationalist, some are unionist, some are progressive, some are regressive (often within the same party!) What do you think they have in common? What direction would they work?
For example are the Liberal Democrats part of your left block that would win? But when given the choice they coalesce more readily with the Conservatives in practice.
> If they could do this they'd form a coalition and form a government, but they don't.
In order to form a coalition, parties need to collectively have enough elected MPs to hold a majority in the House of Commons. A major point we are making is that the electoral system in the UK allows the Conservatives to gain a disproportionate number of seats, unreasonably preventing the other parties from being in a position to form such a coalition.
As the House of Commons Library itself explains[0]:
"In 2019 the Conservatives got one seat for every 38,264 votes, while Labour got one seat for every 50,837 votes. It took many more votes to elect a Lib Dem (336,038) and Green MP (866,435), but far fewer to elect an SNP MP (25,883)."
(Note that the fact that the SNP are over-represented in Westminster is little comfort, given that they only field candidates in a minority of Commons constituencies, and I have covered the strength of their support in the Scottish parliament elections, with its different voting system, in another comment. Also, the SNP are principled enough to oppose FPTP despite the fact that they benefit from it in Westminster[1]).
To steelman your position a little, perhaps by "form a coalition" you mean some sort of electoral pact before an election. I mentioned in another comment that this has been tried in a few cases, but there are severe political problems with the idea of parties telling their candidates not to stand in specific constituencies, hoping that their voters will still bother to turn out and support the "second best" alternative. Not only is there no guarantee, under FPTP, that this strategy would work, but it would start to make a mockery of the idea of having political parties at all if some of them are actively avoiding standing candidates.
> You can look at them and call many of them 'left', but other than that they're not really compatible.
It's true that there are as many policies which divide these parties as unite them, but it's more accurate to say that a Principal Component Analysis would detect what we call the "political spectrum" of left and right wing parties as the most significant dimension of political opinion.
Just because you would need millions of political parties to fully capture all the individual political positions of every voter doesn't mean that there aren't broad trends, and in particular it is possible that a (weighted) random policy picked from a non-Conservative party could be on average more popular with the electorate than the equivalent Conservative party policy.
Ideally I would express this as candidates, parties, and voters in an n-dimensional space, so we could talk about drawing hyperplanes to define parliamentary majorities, but that's probably too abstract to be helpful. If you haven't played around with Nicky Case's "To Build A Better Ballot"[2], which helps visualise something similar in two dimensions, I highly recommend it.
> For example are the Liberal Democrats part of your left block that would win? But when given the choice they coalesce more readily with the Conservatives in practice.
We really only have one data point for how readily the Liberal Democrats form coalitions with different parties, and the specific political environment in 2010 is really not helpful to extrapolate that point from. Not only would Labour and the Liberal Democrats not have had enough MPs to hold a majority at the time, but the reputational damage of the coalition with the Conservatives has no doubt changed the political calculus that the Liberal Democrats would apply if a similar situation were to happen again.
[0] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/general-election-2019-t...
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/snp-would-vot...
While the Bushes, Kennedys, and Trumps came from wealthy backgrounds, the rest of the recent presidents came from lower-income brackets.
Ronald Reagan grew up poor in Illinois. Bill Clinton grew up poor in Arkansas and went to college and law school on scholarship, and his wife grew up in a middle-class family in Illinois and attended public schools.
Obama and his wife grew up middle-class in Hawaii and Illinois, respectively. Biden also grew up middle-class, in Pennsylvania; his second wife came from an upper-middle class background.
If we had a popular vote then UKIP would've had nearly 70 seats back in 2015, with a huge swath of representation for London. Somehow that sounds even worse than what we have now.
Long story short; it’s complicated.
It’s not entirely related wealth or education but they are big factors.
You can’t join the aristocracy via wealth alone.
At best you’d probably end up upper middle class if you were educated i.e. Public School followed by Oxford or Cambridge. Maybe your children or grandchildren could if you really have enough money. Becoming an MP would probably help you turn money into a title.
“Public” schools, like Eton, are the fee paying alternative to a “private” tutor. They’re not be confused with schools “for the plebs”.
You’ll certainly need land if want to join the Gentry.
Traditionally, the difference between a Forest and a Wood is that the Forest was once land populated by Commoners (that’s the middle and working class) that someone in the Aristocracy put a fence around and claimed exclusive right to hunt deer on.
To this day councils have to pay people to walk the ancient Footpaths and Bridleways every year to stop would be aristocrats claiming the as part of their land.
And if you wear brown shoes and a white shirt to the wrong interview in the City you’re not getting the job.
As I said, it’s complicated. Complicated and silly.
It's not fair. But neither is the UK and EU getting wildly more doses per capita than Africa, South America or Oceania.
Why would they be obliged to export even one dose of something they produced, before they have provided for every single one of their citizens?
My point is fairness is in the eye of the beholder. What we're left with are contracts. And contractually, AstraZeneca seems to be in the right. The EU negotiated, at first glance (and to this non-expert), a poor agreement.
Whatever the means, as long as they are legal, we can and should force equal burden of delays.
I guess EU didn't play it the best way from political perspective, since we are now labeled as bad.
Still, I'm personally impressed that EU is actually able to do something of consequence in somewhat short time frame.
It's different--one is an executive action, the other contractual duty--but yes. Moreover, it doesn't solve the problem. The EU wants doses made in the UK. The EU doses have already been exported to the UK.
This whole thing looks incompetent on the EU's part, from the outside. First, the delays in signing. Second, the sloppiness of the contract. And third, the incompetence of the post-problem situation. The EU has something Britain wants--a trade deal. Strike a deal with the UK to get their vaccines. Instead, we have a song and dance, empty threats and name calling.
It's hard to imagine any such deal being countenanced by the UK government. It's clearly in the stronger position here, and after its response to the virus situation has had so many problems in most areas, the handling of the vaccine has so far been a rare but very welcome exception. It seems implausible the government would give up such a huge PR win and instead do something that would surely be represented as risking their citizens' lives or worse, even in the already extremely unlikely event that the EU offered a much better deal than the one just concluded after years of negotiations.
As long as government ministers can confidently confirm that they believe the UK/AZ agreement is solid and enough doses will be available to meet the schedule the government has stated, they can try to maintain a dignified silence on the EU/AZ situation and let it be seen as a dispute over a contract to which the UK is not a party. They have little to gain by getting involved and much to lose.
If there is suffering, and if we can, we ease the suffering. The US and EU have bought way more vaccine doses than they need.
It even makes sense from a utilitarian perspective, as we live in a global market economy.
Since when did people become so nationalistic again? We're humans, first and foremost.
However this is not about how many vaccines have been bought, but how many are being delivered via current production. The US, EU, UK, etc have indeed bought more than they needed, but they won't (by definition) be using more than they needed - the extra purchases were due to spreading the production and vaccine approval risk to ensure that enough were available.
You could reasonably argue they shouldn't be vaccinating whole populations, by which I mean including low-risk elements, whilst poorer countries cannot vaccinate even high-risk ones. That's a different question though.
That being said, none of the short term measures curently being discussed, will help getting any doses earlier. And the total amount ordered is more than enough.
If the both the UK and the EU wanted a million doses each and AZ has the capacity to manufacture 5 million, then nothing stops them from entering into other agreements with countries in Africa, South America, or Oceania.
They probably overestimated their capacity and are now pushing back on deadlines. I don't have much to criticise AZ for on that since we've all been there, but you can't tell a paying customer that you have other customers that paid you first, when you signed a contract agreeing to meeting certain deadlines. It simply does not matter. Did AstraZeneca lie in their negotiations regarding their capacity? Let's also remember that this was likely brought up when discussing the funding for manufacturing sites in Europe and the UK.
EU is claiming that AZ is breaching the contract it had with them. Whether they are in the right or not, what does the UK's relationship with AZ have to do with it?
Because the EU wants AstraZeneca to export doses made in Britain to the EU.
Correct. Just pointing out why Britain is relevant.
I believe the UK has made the claim that they have exclusive contractual right to domestically-made vaccines until a certain point. Not sure if AstraZeneca corroborated.
Apparently so https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/26/head-of-astraz...
"it is not under any obligation, contractual or otherwise, to any Person or third party in respect of the Initial Europe Doses or that conflicts with or is inconsistent in any material respect with the terms of this Agreement or that would impede the complete fulfillment of its obligations under this Agreement;"
This ended up not being true, which was not totally unexpected.
AstraZeneca ends up in the bad position of choosing on which of their contracts their will fail, and they evidently chose to fail the EU's in its near totality for the next few months.
It pains me to see the cynicism in shielding behind "best effort" clauses (standard in any procurement under R&D) or in "who came first". It's a serious matter that warrants a cooler and more balanced solution that this.
There is text blacked out in the definition of Initial Europe Doses after "within the EU" that I'm curious about.
Also, the clause reads "AstraZeneca has committed to use Best Reasonable Efforts...to build capacity to manufacture 300 million Doses of the Vaccine...for distribution within the EU..." That's ambiguous with respect to distribution.
AstraZeneca are using Best Reasonable Efforts to build this manufacturing capacity. But they aren't under Best Reasonable Efforts obligations to use this capacity for the EU. (The definition of Best Reasonable Efforts overlooks distribution entirely.)
It's a shitty situation. Pain has to be allocated. But based on contract, versus loose notions of fairness, AstraZeneca is under no obligation to export British-made doses to the EU.
"5. Manufacturing and Supply.
5.1. Initial Europe Doses. AstraZeneca shall use its Best Reasonable Efforts to manufacture the Initial Europe Doses within the EU for distribution, and to deliver to the Distribution Hubs, following EU marketing authorisation, as set forth more fully in Section 7.1. approximately [censored] 2020 [censored] Q1 2021, and (iii) the remainder of the Initial Europe Doses by the end of [censored]"
It looks like the EU expected to have the vaccine approved by the end of 2020 and delivered soon after that. Based on media reporting, it would appear that AZ notified the EU that it would not meet the first deadline, but did so with only a short notice (15 days according to some outlets?).
Without getting into speculation, one date that isn't censored is that which specifies when the "Additional Doses" would stop being offered at the agreed price: 1 July 2021:
"9.3.Additional Doses. AstraZeneca shall provide any agreed Additional Doses at Cost of Goods until 1 July 2021, unless AstraZeneca determines in good faith that the COVID-19 Pandemic has not ceased as of 1 July 2021, in which case AstraZeneca shall [censored]"
So, if the initial doses are delayed, then the optional doses are delayed after that, and then the additional doses are delayed after that, it would seem that the agreed prices would only apply for a small fraction of the additional doses that would've been expected, whatever seemed reasonable. It seems that any delays in the "Initial Doses" could have an effect on the rest of the contract agreement.
EU was months late and they move much slower than other parties in the whole process and on top of that they signed agreements with "best effort" clauses instead of hard obligation of vaccine delivery. How is this UK's fault?
The whole thing is a parody of Brussels bureaucratism.
It's not, it's clearly stated that the contract covers the UK facilities.
Check article 5.4
The contract clearly says they're to make their "best reasonable effort" to satisfy this contract. Breaking previous contracts would be unreasonable.
There are so many things the EU could do here that could help: - Provide more resource to AZ to get more facilities up and running. - Offer to sell some of that future ramped up production back to countries like the UK in exchange for getting some vaccines now. - Expedite the approval process of other vaccines. - Allow member states to negotiate indepently.
What did they choose to do? Raid the EU vaccine production facilties, and threaten legal action against the very company trying to supply them the vaccine. Like yeah, that's really going to help people.
The UK government directly paid for the research and development of the AZ vaccine, and paid for the manufacturing facilities in the UK to be built, when there was a lot of pressure to simply partner with US firms. Where was the EU when this was happening? Why didn't the EU take it upon themselves to do the same thing?
The presumptiveness of the EU to dictate that AZ should redirect UK vaccines to the EU is astounding.
To me reading the contract as a non-lawyer, the BRE conditions felt like game, set and match to AZ.
For one thing, the definition of "best reasonable efforts" does seem to be ambiguous, but evidently it's intended to relate to what a business comparable to AZ would be expected to do. It seems unreasonable to expect that a large, multinational business manufacturing essential drugs during a public health crisis would knowingly and deliberately breach an existing contract to supply a fixed number of doses on a fixed schedule to another party, which is what AZ reportedly has with the UK.
On top of that, there is the discrepancy between 5.1 and 5.4. The latter says the UK counts as "within the EU" while talking about manufacturing at sites located within the EU, but it also explicitly says the inclusion of the UK is only for that specific clause. Clause 5.1 is specifically about the initial doses and requires AZ to use its BREs to manufacture the initial doses within the EU with no such including-the-UK qualifier.
So it appears that, contractually, AZ is actively required to make BRE to manufacture the initial doses for the EU not in the UK, and in any case, unless there is something very strange hidden in the censored wording, the obligations relating to delivery are also covered by a BRE qualifier.
Presumably this will all end up being decided in court, probably long after it really matters for anything other than financial compensation, but on a first reading by this layperson, it does look like AZ have the stronger case here.
- approval timing;
- contract celebration date;
Has anything to do with the fact that AZ is failing to comply with it's duties.
AZ isn't waiting for EU approval to start producing stock to fulfill their initial order, that makes no sense - it takes WEEKS to build stock for the goal of the 80 million doses. The stock that will be delivered, 30% of what was expected, is being produced before this approval. So this "approval process" argument makes no sense.
Regarding the contract celebration date, same applies - they were expected to deliver 80 million doses in a timeframe, which they agreed upon.
Why don't we do this the other way around, why don't we all be transparent and see if they are also failing to supply the UK? Because if it's supply issues, then it should be a problem of both countries no?
Or they were shifting stock made in Europe to fulfill UK orders?
I really hope the EU gets to the bottom of this, because it stinks.
The timeline:
- The UK paid for research and development of a new vaccine.
- The UK pre-ordered X amount of vaccine.
- AZ began setting up facilities in the UK to manufacture X amount of vaccine
- Three months later, the EU pre-orders Y amount of vaccine.
- AZ begins setting up EU plants to produce Y amount of vaccine. If you check the contract, the EU specifically says that the plants must be built in the EU, and that AZ would need special permission to use UK plants, so of course AZ are not going to reserve extra capacity in the UK for this contract.
- The EU plants suffered problems ramping up production, in large part because the shorter schedule set by the EU.
The provisioning for the EU contract has nothing to do with the prior UK contract. There's nothing that "stinks" here, only poor planning on behalf of the EU bureaucracy and a sprinkle of bad luck. Had the EU not stipulated that the plants be built in the EU, AZ would have likely been able to provision more capacity more quickly. Had the EU placed their order earlier, there would have been more time for AZ to resolve the issues in the EU plants. Had the EU responded to the drop in production by asking for assistance from the UK, or by attempting to assist AZ, instead of throwing its weight around, I would have a lot more sympathy.
The EU, in its slowness to react, has actively harmed its member nations, and is now looking for a scapegoat (AZ) to blame to avoid the repurcussions.
So the UK is getting orders from EU, and from the UK, and the EU should sit and watch a company not complying to their duties while the block production capacity is being used to fulfill orders for USA, UK, Isreal, and many other parts of the world...
While the UK and USA have their production capacity only for themselves AND still get production from Europe.
To top that off AZ is failing to fulfill EU orders because they are using EU capacity to deliver to UK?
Basically USA and UK want all production for themselves AND also production from other countries, while everyone else should sit and watch because the concept of "best effort" only applies if it's not failing the UK contract.
So something isn't adding up here, and yes, it fucking stinks. I hope they block all vaccines exports until EU deadlines/stock is replentished.
First, that was only the initial vaccines. All vaccines since then were produced entirely within the UK. Second, the UK paid for the development of those vaccines, the EU did not. Without the UK funding and the collaboration with Oxford, AZ was not even planning to develop its own vaccine variant, and so those facilities would not have been producing any vaccine at all.
> While the UK and USA have their production capacity only for themselves AND still get production from Europe.
As mentioned, the UK and USA paid to develop these products. The EU is expecting everyone else to pay the cost of development, and then just get the vaccine at cost when it arrives, and still have priority?
> So something isn't adding up here, and yes, it fucking stinks. I hope they block all vaccines exports until EU deadlines/stock is replentished.
Good luck with that. All the vaccine manufacturers are suffering shortfalls, and the UK is not reliant on exports from the EU. I hope that further vaccine production goes to countries that didn't have the economic means to build their own vaccine supply, rather than those too short-sighted to build one.
Well, then why not disclose those figures like EU is asking? If it was only the initial order, how many doses of it? How many are currently be produced?
The EU paid whatever it had to pay to have 80 million doses in February, because that was the deal. Instead they are to receive 30 million, with little to no transparency around why and how many doses are being moved out of Europe.
>As mentioned, the UK and USA paid to develop these products. The EU is expecting everyone else to pay the cost of development, and then just get the vaccine at cost when it arrives, and still have priority?
The EU also upfront money, to the point that AZ established a timeline and a number of vaccines to be delivered - 80 million doses by Feb. Or now some contracts have more value than others? Why doesn't the UK release their contract to the public then?
The reality is that maybe EU should have locked production to EU like UK and USA apparently did. It's all "let's end the pandemic together" but apparently UK and USA want to deal with their problem first and let the rest of the world make vaccines for them.
>Good luck with that. All the vaccine manufacturers are suffering shortfalls, and the UK is not reliant on exports from the EU. I hope that further vaccine production goes to countries that didn't have the economic means to build their own vaccine supply, rather than those too short-sighted to build one.
Well now that the first batches that came from EU are delivered (and god only knows how many, because there's no transparency) it's easy to say that you don't need EU production. Until the UK had no production it was good to receive from EU, now that it has some capacity you don't need it more?
Yeah, really hope EU starts to crackdown on this. Either everyone contributes, or sanctions and restrictions should start to be applied.
There's a big difference between paying for a vaccine to be developed, and paying for a developed vaccine to be manufactured.
The EU only did the latter (and at the bare minimum price...) Other countries did the former.
> The reality is that maybe EU should have locked production to EU
They did, just read the contract. It's not about locking production, it's about paying for development.
As an analogy: let's say you designed a new mobile phone, and you sent those designs off to a chinese company to manufacture. The deal is that after filling your order, the chinese company can continue manufacturing the product and sell it to other potential buyers in china. Is it surprising that your order should be filled before those of the other potential buyers?
The other buyers had the opportunity to come up with their own designs. They could even have split the cost of developing those designs with you. They didn't do either of those things. Now that manufacturing has hit a short-fall, they don't have a leg to stand on.
You're just making up something to try to justify it, where it says no where that deal.
AZ was the one that said it will sell at price of cost.
AZ was the one that agreed that it would fulfill EU orders from outside EU production.
AZ was the one who agreed that no other contract would compromise EU supply.
If AZ had to take into consideration contract celebration dates, development costs participation, and what ever else you're saying that makes you claim that AZ is entitled to breach the contract - then THEY SHOULD HAVE PLACED THAT IN THE CONTRACT.
Maybe EU would have looked at other alternatives, or made the required adjustments.
AZ has different contracts with different countries and they don't want to disclose that some contracts are being prioritized over others, and putting themselves on the breach of EU contract.
Section 6.2 of the contract:
"To the extent that Astra Zeneca's performance under this Agreement is impeded by any such competing agreements, AstraZeneca shall not be deemed in breach of this Agreement as a result of any such delay due to the aforementioned competing agreement(s). https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9201267/EU-vaccine-...
The rest of your comment makes OP's point: this is a contract dispute. Why is it relevant when the UK signed their contract, or that the EU hadn't approved the virus yet? Such comments only serve to make UK citizens angry at the EU.
Best Reasonable Efforts are defined on page 3 of this post.
"The activities and degree of effort that a company of a similar size and with similarly-sized infrastructure and similar resources as AstraZeneca would undertake or use in the development and manufacture of a Vaccine..."
Couple problems:
- "Development and manufacture" doesn't include distribution.
- AstraZeneca has practically zero track record in vaccines. "Similar resources" is a potential out.
We are working on that!
The problem, in my opinion, is with the way the report it, the time they spend on it and the demonization of the EU.
Even if EU is 100% in the wrong, do they need to spend half their air-time covering a dispute between AstraZeneca and the EU, arguing how the EU is unreasonable and pretty much the monster that tries to steal the vaccines from the UK people?
My disappointment is the with the division, polarization and demonization of the EU they are promoting.
After listening to that rhetoric with my (British) wife for 10 minutes straight, I heard heard saying "yeah, fuck these EU assholes".
Sounds reasonable. The EU are threatening to block exports of vaccines. It's a huge story over here because people are rightly concerned, especially given the huge number of deaths we've bad, and it's incredibly relevant because it's our first major of contention with the EU after the transition period.
If you want to place the blame for increasing divisions, maybe try starting with the organisation who are threatening a trade war during a global pandemic.
There's no doubt the UK has been nimble and reasonably effective on the vaccine front (as we all know, the EU is a very mixed bag by construction); just as well since it has been dreadful on the mortality front. The UK commentariat is a little bit shocked, but it is to be expected - it's out of the club. There will be more consequences later.
I, for one, am leaving the UK with my family.
Meanwhile the EU acted bureaucratically and treated this like a procurement exercise, squabbling about spending and placing orders in December. It is now scapegoating andsuing a company that is producing the vaccine at cost.
GSK has every inventive to scale up capacity and produce as many doses as possible, and has no profit motive to divert doses. It is simply abiding by its agreement with the UK to use UK funded capacity to supply the country first, whilst making best efforts to iron out kinks for European orders.
https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-coronavirus-vaccine-s...
They, factually, objectively, _were_ later in signing an agreement, and have taken longer to approve a vaccine in use elsewhere in the world. Why should they not share some blame from their citizens like any other politician should? The UK government deserves scorn for their handling of the pandemic in the UK. The EU should be criticised for this. It is not a football match. We do not need to 'support' one 'side' against the other.
Now it is all water under the bridge because countries are desperate to have enough vaccines.
6 months from now, all countries are going to pretend to be nice nice and when there will be oversupply and new variant of the COVID, they will be dumping the old vaccines on other countries.
- The UK signed months before
- The EU has been slow to vaccinate independent of that AZ dispute
- The EMA did only approve this vaccine (which the UK is already using) a few hours ago
This dispute has sadly been made into a hugely sensitive national dispute as a distraction from the poor performance of the EU's vaccination programme. Even if nothing had gone wrong with the AZ vaccine production, the EU still would have much poorer rollout than the UK. It's just a cover of jingoism.
They did screw up distrbution so, royaly. And with distribution being the responsbility of the member states, well go figure. This contract has its defiencies, I really hate it that there are n consequences when delivery schedules aren't met. And how delivery schedules will be defined.
And none of the urrent discussion are helpfull in solving any of these issues.
Or pretended to be. None of those people believe anything at all.
But that's the story of Brexit and its 40 years of media support. Even the BBC has often been on the technically correct side happily reporting welcome change as "UK change" and blaming unwelcome on the EU, even if the UK voted for it.
Now the Swiss and Brits are not part of EU and their own interest supersedes their alliance with EU obviously.
Shit hitting the ceiling wouldn't be that dramatic in comparison :)
You try and imply the BBC has been pro brexit - but seriously, this is by far the most hostile the liberal UK media has been to the EU in a long time.
Edit: Also spreading fake news about the efficacy of the drug.
I suspect if the EU were to invade the UK, you would still be attacking the UK press for outrage.
I frankly dislike the EU and am thoroughly enjoying them make such an ass of themselves.
The BBC can't win. When they editorialise to try to dig into a subject, it's left wing pandering, and when they just listen to official sources, they're right wing mouthpieces.