there could be some reasons behind this. no one knows why thou...
To me one likely explanation for this is that AZ was holding off on applying to the EU in the hope that they could make these doses "in secret" and sell them outside the EU.
Another, more mundane one, is that their back office is just a total shitshow with so much panic going on that somebody just didn't file it.
The EU started negotiating later and signed a contract with fewer remedies than the UK (https://www.politico.eu/article/the-key-differences-between-...). It's not at all surprising that AZ is focusing their efforts on the UK.
Must have been some contract...
but this is still a guess at this point.
Did Moderna get more support from other companies/the government?
(I suppose my point is that I would have expected such teething problems from a young company like Moderna, but they seem to have done everything right.)
Through I think that isn't going anywhere outside of bureaucracy, it's still a valid export controlled vaccine just not produced in a valid way.
But then if the pandemic would have been mostly over by now they would probably have gotten away with it.