EU blocks export of AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccines to Australia
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dw.com
What has emerged more recently is that the UK contract was, in contradiction of earlier statements, signed a day after the EU contract.
The UK contract's text was also leaked somewhat accidentally, and it is almost identical to the previously-released EU contract. I've looked at them side-by-side and I'm just not enough of an armchair lawyer to make too much sense of 60-page contracts, but I couldn't quite see how the existing differences would constitute any clear priority for the UK.
I have been following this quite closely, and this is complete new to me. I would really like to see a source on this, otherwise it should be considered false information.
As someone else posted: https://www.politico.eu/article/the-key-differences-between-...
> However, the key lies in an earlier agreement that AstraZeneca made back in May with the U.K., which was a binding deal establishing “the development of a dedicated supply chain for the U.K.,” an AstraZeneca spokesperson said.
One official close to the U.K. contract said the agreement began as an email in April from the U.K. government saying it would provide £65 million to help the University of Oxford execute its production plan. It later evolved into a fully-fledged contract between the government and the British-Swedish company, which also might explain why it took until August for the contract to be signed.
Most important, however, is that it meant that the British government was “effectively a major shareholder” in the jab’s development as early as April. After Oxford and AstraZeneca agreed to team up at the end of April, for example, the British government filled seats on Oxford-AstraZeneca joint liaison committees.
“Protecting the U.K.‘s supply was a central objective ... as that was being negotiated from April onwards,” the official said. Even though this isn't explicitly stated in the contract, the official said that the government’s role in the early stages of the vaccine meant “there is absolutely no way that AstraZeneca would have been able to enter a contract which gave away equal priority of access to the U.K. doses.”
This British supply was therefore already secured by the time four EU countries — Germany, the Netherlands, France and Italy — signed an agreement in June to obtain up to 300 million doses of the vaccines. The countries’ deal at the time was a fairly bare-bones agreement, and it’s unclear whether it established a European supply chain, but over the summer it was transferred into the formal purchasing agreement managed by the Commission.
The UK contract says the supply chain "will be appropriate and sufficient", and the EU one talks about "best reasonable efforts".
The UK contract gives the power to penalise for non-delivery, whereas the EU one waives all rights to sue other than for bad production practices or wilful misconduct - and even then all it can do is withhold money.
The EU also agreed in regard to other contracts (eg the UK one) that when being "impeded by any such competing agreements, AstraZeneca shall not be deemed in breach".
Given that (plus the AZ vaccine belongs to a UK university and the UK government has been on the decision board for the project since April 2020) it was inevitable which 'side' would go short if production slowed.
(I'm British, but hopefully not too biased)
PS. IANAL, most of the above came from https://www.politico.eu/article/the-key-differences-between-... though I've also seen similar analysis elsewhere.
From the EU’s point of view, one might wonder if any prior agreement with a potential to interrupt supplies should have then been disclosed during negotiations. Maybe there was no legal requirement to do so, but I wonder how good a strategy that is in a long-term game against a party that literally makes the law.
The EU can be legally inept, as we’ve learnt, in everything that isn’t Brexit. AZ might allow us to learn how good they are at what’s, conversely, been the Brexiteers’ domain so far, carrying grudges.
Later, UK and US agreed to buy AZ vaccine and are paying 3$ and 4$.
https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n281
Now all of the sudden agreements with UK and US are fulfilled and with EU are not.
Countries are currently outbidding each other and stealing the supplies. It was naive of EU bureaucracy to think that the cheapest price is the priority.
Also, the US signed a deal with AZ in May of 2020, which would seem to put them ahead of the UK and EU? https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/astrazeneca-scores-1b-fr...
There's some minor amount of irony if the UK contract really was a day later than the EU's (in a 3 year old screaming "gotcha" kind of way), but it still shouldn't change a thing about who gets how many vaccines at which point in time.
In the end it seems to boil down to AZ not meeting the numbers they promised and having to cut corners _somewhere_, and the EU doesn't want to be the one bearing the load - at least not alone: other vaccine suppliers cut down deliveries due to production issues as well (e.g. biontech/pfizer, also due to retooling a Belgian factory), but they split it across the board and apparently handled that transparently with all customers. What goes around comes around, and so that was a pretty painless experience for all involved.
With AZ there was the additional complication that the company is part British (and it's generally presented as a British company only) and those contractual disagreements happened in parallel to those other contractual disagreements between the EU and Brits about shipping goods, so there was already a higher base temperature in the public discussion of the AZ delivery schedule.
I didn’t see it mentioned in the article but of the total of 53.4 million doses of AZ vaccine Australia has ordered 50 million are being manufactured in Australia.
What’s more except for some minor outbreaks originating from returned traveller quarantine community transmission has been effectively stopped in Australia for the last 6 months. Even 1 case outside of returned traveller quarantine is big news and cause for internal travel restrictions. It’s been months since the last person died from COVID-19 and the economy has largely recovered to prepandemic GDP levels.
Frankly this is a minor delay in Australia’s vaccine rollout and the doses will go to serving places that are frankly more in need.
The entire EU was only able to produce one vaccine: also UK is not in EU anymore, and AstraZeneca is a British-Swedish.
It does not come as a surprise. In decades, they haven't invested any significant money in research and tech, but austerity.
Thousands of EU engineers and scientists moved to the USA to never come back.
EU is now paying an high price. And given their inability to reverse this trend, they will always be at the mercy of other more developed and advanced countries.
So while it isn't solely an EU effort, they were crucial in it's development.
None of the major vaccines would have been possible without international cooperation for sequencing, development, and testing....and the virus doesn't check your passport before it enters your cells.
Ultimately issues like competing contractual obligations can get ugly, fast. But aggressive vaccine nationalism can impede the kind of international collaboration that is necessary to produce enough product to inoculate everyone who wants a shot.
Normally vaccine exports are no problem for the EU, originally there wasn't even the mechanism that is now used to block that one shipment.
Given all the circumstances (various vaccine exports still going on, Australia having a pretty calm Covid situation right now and starting production of their own AZ vaccine this month) I wonder if that shipment was deliberately chosen as a statement to get AZ to stop playing games while minimizing the impact it has on global efforts. (or maybe I'm giving bureaucrats too much credit)
Of course a heads-up notice to Australia would have been nice if that was the case.
Without BioNTech, Pfizer would have partnered with a different company (Moderna, Novavax, the list goes on..) and produced a vaccine.
I don't mean to understate the value of what BioNTech's research set Pfizer (and the world) up for, but without Pfizer there would be no BioNTech vaccine.
Without them, BioNTech might have partnered with some other pharma corp: Merck (the German company, not the US wartime spinoff) is headquartered 30 km from BioNTech, Sanofi has facilities 20km away and there are a few more around the block that have significant experience in both navigating regulatory frameworks and ramping up production.
In such a scenario, maybe they wouldn't provide 60% of EU shipments now (the numbers I have at hands), but "produced nothing" seems to lowball it.
This is just factually incorrect. BioNTech had the capability to produce a vaccine on their own, but not at the scale they needed to. Nor would they have been able to handle distribution. Previously they were only producing various mRNA medication at a much smaller scale.
Pfizer was in a better position to run a large-scale study and create new supply chains at the scale that was needed.
The relationship between BioNTech and Pfizer is not unlike the one between an artist and a music label.
AZ is UK-Swedish, Biontech/Pfiser is German-US but all this shows that EU is falling behind?
Wouldn't that count 2 for EU, 1 for UK 1 for USA? Is this some accounting trick where it ends up 1 US, 1 UK and 0 for EU?
Europe missed on the computers and internet but I don't see how EUs involvement in inventing the first two vaccines show that Europe is pathetic when the other partners are superior.
Actually, I think the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was also developed in EU(Netherlans?). Would that count as +1 or -1 for the old world?
While the result is a "civil service" style European Commission, the end result is generally some kind of compromise or "average". It's hard for the EU to conduct a negotiation over vaccines when there's national interests lobbying for bulk buying of French candidate vaccines vs. German-made vaccines etc.
This makes it far harder for them to negotiate anything, unless they can all pre-arrange their own position. As soon as their desires diverge, the negotiation gets much harder for them, as they have to try and negotiate a compromise position that keeps everyone equally unhappy.
Israel UAE UK (lucky them, they BREXIT just in time) USA
Yeah, that’s worked many times in history.
Compare that to Poland with almost 20% population dead and 50 years of Soviet imposed communism.
More Americans died from COVID-19 than due to WWII and WWI combined.
The only big power handling the whole situation well is China.
A big part of their initial resitance to the EU would have been the banking regulations.
This is a bureaucratic/political problem, maybe an operations problem, not so much an R&D problem.
Well, your mind is going to be totally blown when you find out where they're based.
The trend in pharma has been to HQ in the USA for tax reasons and access to capital, but a lot of the research still happens in the EU
The fact that they were trying to export doesn't bode well to them pretending they're following "best effort" wording on the contract.
Follow the contracts and you don't get your shipments blocked. Pfizer exports from Europe to Canada no problem.
If this was the US or any other country I believe most of the comments would be positive.
This does not make any sense, it's worse than crude economic nationalism because it doesn't take other agreements into context.
They were probably 'following the contracts' - but by the nature of the agreements - at least some shipments to go Australia.
"The fact that they were trying to export doesn't bode well to them pretending they're following "best effort" wording on the contract."
No - this is false.
Everyone is behind on manufacturing - that we all accept.
This means that shipments everywhere are going to be delayed.
If they are late overall, then of course some shipments are going to go to other customers, while some shipments go to Italy.
Your statement basically implies:
"I don't care what your contracts are - Italy comes before all the other customers, if you don't ship to us, we are going to use emergency measures to screw you and your other customers".
You're not saying: "respect the contract"
You're saying: "respect our contract, we don't give a crap about anyone else's contract, because we have the power of the law to screw them"
"If this was the US or any other country I believe most of the comments would be positive. "
No, the news would roughly be the same: a nation screwed up in it's procurement, months behind other nations, is screwing up agreed deliveries to other nations because of a procurement failure.
The EU's attempts to 'work together' to secure vaccines has been a big boondoggle, this is obvious.
There has been a shipment to Australia before: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-28/astrazeneca-oxford-va...
A few wins for the local nationalists i.e. 'our people first' ... but it comes with just as much of a downside.
Better just to get the vaccines moving.
The only upside is the PR to some local citizens who want to feel that 'The EU is doing their job protecting us'.
Successful nations are not resorting to this. The EU is way behind and it's a really look.
The UK is 33% vaccinated and is going to fully open up in a few months, once they are full-blown open, then the clock is ticking on Von Der Leyen's job and the credibility of the EU because every day that goes by while US/UK are full steam ahead is a slap in the face. If the EU is 6 months behind fully opening up then the consequences - were there actually any way for EU citizens to do anything about it - would be severe. Since the EU political system is shielded from populism like 'elections' and certainly 'referendums' they're probably safe. I suggest the elites will band together and put all the blame on Von Der Leyen. But it may not come to that, production is ramping up it may not be so bad.
This is the biggest crisis of our era so the headline optics are really important, and the underlying materiality of lock-downs are felt by every citizen in the country. Imagine 60 million people under duress, looking next door, seeing how everything is open and happy? That's a political nightmare.
The vaccination data is here [1]
At the current rate, UK is open in a few months, US a bit thereafter. EU won't be able to open for technically 2 years (!!) so it's going to really depend on how vaccinations ramp up. Every politician is sweating.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
Edit: I should add, Italy blocking shipments to Australia is a completely different kind of communication than for example Trump, saying, earlier in the pandemic that he would 'prioritize Americans'. The later is a tough, but reasonable sounding policy. But actively blocking shipments especially when agreements have been made - it's bad. Honestly, if it were a remotely 'poorer country' like Brazil or whatever ... it would be even worse.
It's just bad however you cut it. The headline you want is 'we'll be done by August' etc..
USA never intended to export vaccines under Trump administration, Biden is upholding it.
The only difference really is that our EU politicians had big words, but when the rubber hit the read went the same route as everyone else.
To be honest, EU politicians were naive.
We should have banned all exports very early on as everyone else did and then graciously allow exports on case by case basis to the level we have now.
It would have been a lot better optics, but the same practical outcome.
An export ban would have made hardly any difference as production would have probably been aligned around the fact.
The EU is not 'naive' - it is 'failing' perhaps the most important test since it's inception.
Being a 'few months behind' US/UK/China etc. will mostly ok, but if it's more than 6 months behind, then this failure will resonate for decades.
Fair or not fair, right or wrong, the facts will be immaterial to the headlines that will ring for a very, very long time.
For example Denmark is doing quite well, but Bulgaria is doing quite bad.
So to repeat, healthcare is not a responsibility of the EU.
The EU is definitely the entity responsible for acquiring the vaccines on behalf of nation states - this is what is failing.
The 'delay' is not due to Denmark inability to field nurses, it's in the EU's ability to secure product - for whatever reason.
And in the end, it won't matter. If the EU ends up 6 months behind other nations 'there will be no excuses'.
I think that they'll probably catch up, but there's a real possibility they don't.
Why? This isn't something the EU normally does.
The approach actually makes sense, if everyone was acting rationally and competently it would work.
But they screwed it up.
Everyone is clamouring about the 'new world order' and 'pivot to Asia' and wondering what the 'Brexit' result would be ... and the optics of this are 'EU in last place'. It's just a bad look, and it's an event that will ring through time with long lasting effects, at least in 'hearts and minds'. There's still chance to catch up however.
As they should. Why would you expect domestic citizens being deprioritized?
Given the public policy goal is to prevent hospitals being overwhelmed due to admissions with the virus (and the commensurate decline into ICU on a ventilator etc.) the vaccine is doing two things - firstly it's reducing the number of people catching the virus. Secondly, it's reducing the number of people being hospitalised with Covid. That then has a follow-on impacat that there's a reduction in deaths (though that data isn't complete yet for the AZ vaccine, given timeframes, and the need to wait long enough before measuring mortality outcomes).
With good results from a single dose, even after a period of time, in a sense these people are "vaccinated". If the UK needs to re-vaccinate everyone with a booster twice once every 180 days (for example), that's "only" 378k vaccine doses per day, and they can deliver at well above that rate. If the supply increases as projected, there is potential for as many as 4m doses a week to be getting administered by April, with everyone having their first dose by June.
Pressure is then reduced on hospitals (as long as the vaccine is effective against prevalent strains) as you roll out subsequent doses - the 1st dose figures seem promising.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-data-show-vaccines-re... for over 80s
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3790399 for healthcare workers under 65
I would argue generally it’s agreed that humans have short memory.
Astrazeneca may have made other supply chain decisions to build infrastructure outside the EU had they known this.
They absolutely would not. There is so much that goes into the regulations at play here (GxP specifically in Europe, similar to FDA in USA) and building out capacity takes years. They were struggling enough with restructuring their existing production towards this vaccine.
It's an incredibly complex system, for good reason, but it does mean it's extremely slow moving.
For example, much of the European shortfall is tied to expected production at the Belgian CMO partner NOVASEP. AZ first partnered with them in June 2020 and product was expected to be shipping 6 months later in Q1 2021
Over the last 12 months AZ has made a number of similar decisions for retooling or expanding existing facilities, as well as partnering with CMOs based on their distribution plans, which are now disrupted. Had they known about an EU export ban upfront, they may have negotiated different quantiles with ex-EU partners, or engaged additional Ex-EU partners.
https://bioprocessintl.com/bioprocess-insider/global-markets...
Had the EU known that AZ has a different understanding of the contract both had signed (to put it as neutral as possible), the EU-side signature might not have happened.
In that case, the EU could have invested more in other vaccine providers instead of that dud.
The EU is clearly very interested in this "dud" because their few other vaccine investments were unlucky, performed worse, and didn't make it through trials
https://qap.ecdc.europa.eu/public/extensions/COVID-19/vaccin... claims that 47M doses in total have been distributed across the EU. Of those, 8.7M are AZ.
If that company continues to be such a high maintenance supplier (the others had production shortages as well, but _somehow_ they managed to not make a mess out of that that made EU bureaucrats consider it necessary to set up an export control instrument just for them) any effort to get AZ involved might have been better invested in supporting any of the others.
For reference, the sums per product that I extracted from that data set (as of 2021-03-05):
AstraZeneca 8.682.532
BBIBV-CorV 550.000
Moderna 3.069.953
Pfizer/BioNTech 34.366.485
Sputnik V 46.000
Unknown 604.275
--------------------------
Total 47.319.245The "competing agreements" discussed in this section of the contract refers to conflict between the EU-AZ agreements and agreements between the EU and other vaccine manufacturers.
That is to say, if the EU is asking two manufacturers for vaccines who are in turn competing for the same processing plant, they are not in breach. They do however have the responsibility to let the EU know about it.
The contract is actually silent on competition/priority between the EU and other customers.
> In the event AstraZeneca's ability to fulfill its obligations under this Agreement is impeded by a competing agreement entered into by or on behalf of the Commission ... AstraZeneca shall not be deemed in breach of this Agreement as a result of any such delay due to the aforementioned competing agreement(s).
It does, as you say, come from a different perspective. It seems to be saying that if the EU has other agreements, and those other agreements impact AZs ability to meet its obligations, then AZ isn't liable.
So the competing agreements are not agreements between AZ and third parties, but further agreements either between AZ and the EU (most likely, perhaps to cover additional EU orders which may run in parallel for example) or other agreements between the EU and third parties (maybe if those agreements restrict AZ ability to obtain equipment or materials).
Either way, thanks for leading me to look again. This stuff is so complex and interwoven it's almost like we need a specialised profession to help clarify the legal aspects.
Haha, Agreeed.
0 countries planned their rollouts around vaccine exports from the US.
0 countries’ planned rollouts have been upended by new US export controls.
The impact will be more evident in a few months when the US begins playing vaccine diplomacy with under supplied EU countries.
In a few months at least one of two things will have happened:
1. The EU managed to sort out its logistical issues
2. Russia and China already stepped in (as they already do in some places), leaving no room for Washingtonian vaccine diplomacy
This is the EUs bullying negotiation strategy which they employ everywhere spectacularly failing.
The EU accidentally leaked its own contract with AstraZeneca after trying to redact it. It showed that AZ were correct about the wording of the contract and the EU had been lying. There is no real disagreement about that anymore: the EU is on the wrong side of that dispute which is why there's been a lot of posturing but no court cases.
BTW several EU countries have stockpiles of the AZ vaccine they aren't using because their citizens aren't turning up for appointments or volunteering to be vaxxed.
It would be nice if the EU got their house in order though so that they didn't have to steal vaccines to keep people alive.
Those 2500 vaccines would provide much higher value in Australia than saving face for some of the most incompetent politicians on the planet.
Not that you'd need it, as apparently Australia will be able to produce its own AZ vaccine by end of March, but ask AZ to ship batches made in the UK or US to Australia and see how well that goes: at least the EU is allowing exports as long as it's not singularly expected to bear the impact of production issues.
It's nice if you got to keep your job, but many businesses and lives were destroyed. Especially blue collar businesses. The government offered the businesses that it literally forced out of business essentially zero compensation.
Are we supposed to be perpetually in and out of lockdowns for years until the rest of the world is vaccinated?
Economic downturn is directly linked to adverse health outcomes, not just including suicide but things like deferred treatments, depression and otherwise.
"A key element of Oxford’s partnership with AstraZeneca is the joint commitment to provide the vaccine on a not-for-profit basis for the duration of the pandemic across the world, and in perpetuity to low- and middle-income countries."
[1]: https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-11-23-oxford-university-break...
This was discussed many times, If I remember correctly the negotiatons were not on the price but on the liability issues etc.
I mean, AZ says its selling at no-profit. Did EU made them to sell at loss then? What's the logic of this narrative?
On Monday, AstraZeneca said it will provide vaccines at cost “in perpetuity” to low- and middle-income countries in the developing world.
Do any of the Australia or EU belong to "low- and middle-income countries in the developing world"
Partly, yes. Some of the countries still play catch up after being part of or aligned with USSR up until it imploded in the beginning of the 90s.
If the EU countries were bidding against each other maybe a few exceptionally rich and small countries might have end up as Israel while others pay much much higher prices for not-better situation and the rest simply end up like Africa.
I don't think that the contracts would have made any difference in the supply. If that was the case, US could have simply be done before Trump loses election by pouring it's enormous monetary resources. I don't think that US run out of paper for contracts in the Trump era.
"The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is much cheaper, although neither the UK nor the US can match the EU’s $2.15 deal: they are expecting to pay about $3 and $4, respectively, per dose."
The problem with the negotiations on liability is that each day delay in contract may result is bigger loss due to deaths from COVID.
Also, IIRC they said AstraZeneca vaccine is not very effective. I honestly don't blame AZ for not wanting to deal with EU bureaucrats.
I think those things apply (or are prioritised) within the block.
> IIRC they said AstraZeneca vaccine is not very effective.
Do you have a source on that? The vaccine was not certified in certain countries for certain age groups.
However, this 60% number is for totally preventing a COVID infection. The AZ vaccine is just as much, or even more effective at preventing severe illness / hospitalization.
I do blame the EU commission for the general narrative about the AZ vaccine, as it has negative consequences directly with the public : in NL ( and in DE as well if I am not mistaken ), there are people who don't want the AZ vaccine because of this.
So I do blame the EU commission on endangering the general public health of its constituents.
As the comment you replied to asked; do you have an actual source for that? The "much quoted" thing is not a source, it is simply weasel words.
For what it's worth, some national-level politicians have said some negative comments about it, but I can't recall hearing any EU commission figures commenting negatively about it (being cautious about it; sure, but negative, I can't recall any). Happy to be proved wrong though.
That is not very nice to say.
!g astrazeneca 60% effective site:.eu :
First hit : https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/news/ema-recommends-covid-19-va...
Please note I blame them for the general narrative around AZ as being not trustworthy. It is very clear to see in comments from the Dutch public ( and I have seen similar sentiments at our DE neighbors ).
It does not help our press is not very critical, I'll give you that.
On the note of that press release, the title of the page is "EMA recommends COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca for authorisation in the EU", which I wouldn't consider anti-AZ, and reading the text it states in the same paragraph that it's talking about "reduction in the number of symptomatic COVID-19 cases in people given the vaccine".
Anyway, I didn't mean to offend, just calling out what I saw, others may have a different opinion to me of course.
Possibly worse situation in Germany where blatent misinformation was published regarding the Oxford vaccine. Consider the gravity of this given Germany's population is far more "anti-vac" than say the UK.
The EU and Germany/France in particular did a stellar job of destroying the Oxford vaccine's credibility.
Happy to be proved wrong though.
It would be shooting itself in the foot to admit the vaccines it had bought in a group-buy scheme were ineffective or in any way sub-standard. Member states would be furious, and Ursula would have been gone.
This article has a summary of statements from different politicians - https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-what-eu-leaders-said-abo... The closest I can see for the EC is one from Ursula, with the article reporting:
"She then suggested the UK had compromised on "safety and efficacy" by approving the jab so early, despite the EMA reaching the same conclusions as the UK's internationally-respected MHRA which approved the vaccine."
(That is realistically just her attempts to excuse a slower approval process that ultimately reached exactly the same outcome)
I don't know if this is what the OP was referring to, as this is not the EU themselves:
- French president Emmanuel Macron claimed that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was "quasi-ineffective" for over-65s, hours before it was approved by regulators for use on all adults in the EU.
- The German newspaper Handelsblatt that suggested the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was 8% effective among over 65s, which was a misunderstanding and the German health ministry challenged it.
I suspect both of the above had an impact on public perception, especially in France, but neither were actually the EU saying it. One was silly and the other a mistake.
Ursula von der Leyen did, however, suggest the UK had compromised safety by approving the AZ so early (even though the MHRA who approved it are generally reckoned to be one of the best medical regulators in the world).
There is non-discrimination and free trade within the EU. Australia isn’t a member of the EU.
This move by the EU just shows Van der Leyen's floundering and the EU showing again the limits of its efficacy as a governing organization.
The EU has no regular authority to 'enforce' contracts in such a matter, how any company decides to delivery is up to that company.
If Italy wants to sue or sue for damages, it can try do to that.
For example, if this were procurement of some kind of automobile, Italy would not be in a position to 'ban' shipments outside of the EU.
This is happening because:
1) 'Emergency Powers'
2) EU's failure to acquire vaccines through normal operations.
3) Optics and populism. Every politician in the world is sweating right now.
Otherwise, the issue would have be taken up on court.