The EU did sign contracts. Unfortunately AstraZeneca is not going to be able to fulfill the contract, only delivering 30m out of 80m doses in Q1, with an even bigger shortfall expected for Q2.
Here’s the CEO of AZ explaining why the three month extra time was important.
> The UK signed off its deal with AstraZeneca in June 2020, three months before the EU did
So I’m not sure what to believe.
"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."
Quote is from this article: https://www.politico.eu/article/the-key-differences-between-...
Except it didn't, the UK signed in august.
The link also says they wouldn't export EU manufactured vaccines, except Italy blocked an export to Australia a couple of weeks ago.
That's why it was considered "news" when it was reported that one particular contract was signed by the UK one day after the EU. But that's not the full story, since the UK had binding contracts with AZ well before that.
"The link also says they wouldn't export EU manufactured vaccines, except Italy blocked an export to Australia a couple of weeks ago." I haven't seen that claim in the article you linked.
AZ is selling at cost, so they are not making a profit from the vaccine atm. So that statement should be trivially true.
It seems the cost price differs from country to country because of different production costs and other factors (maybe shipping).
[1] https://www.politico.eu/article/astrazeneca-vaccine-cost-hig...
And press releases saying they are ready to go don't count as signing contracts.
All your links are rooted in AZ press releases, which means nothing.
I've seen the articles mention may, june and august as signing dates of the contract, so clearly there is some 'miscommunication'. And both the may and june date originates from AZ, while the actual date turns out to be august.
It's impossible to prove there wasn't a contract signed, it is however possible to prove a contract was signed. Your articles never provided evidence for the date the contract was signed.
"And as POLITICO reported last week, the non-redacted version of the contract shows that the EU also waived its right to sue AstraZeneca in the event of delivery delays."
Quote from this article: https://www.politico.eu/article/the-key-differences-between-...
That's why the USA didn't bother ordering rapidely. They knew they could use the defense act and executive orders to block exports and they did as soon as they could. Even Canada is buying vaccines in Belgium.
The UK was wise. They prevented Oxford associating with Merks and forced them to partner with AstraZeneca. That's the key take away from the pfizer debacle and the Nordstream interferences. Europe needs to strike American companies hard and push them out of the European market as fast as possible. The USA is not our ally.
I want to the EU to be a close ally to the US, but it is not the EU who is the problem here.
China's final assembly companies are not the only kind of manufacturing and not the most worthwhile part of it, although Shenzhen is certainly good at electronics.
Based on this report (which is somewhat anecdotal), the EU exported ~10m vaccine doses to the UK - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-18/europe-wi...
The majority of these doses will be Pfizer, as there's no production in the UK and the UK's MHRA reported ~10m people had a first Pfizer dose by end of Feb
Everyone I know (me included) is currently being given AZ vaccine and I presume the Pfizer is being retained for second shots for those who've already had it.
Of course there's politics in play, as well as the challenges of scaling up vaccine production but IMV biggest thing Britain could do is give enough Ireland enough doses to speedup the vaccination of their population