The Telegraph
France and Germany consider sanctions against vaccine suppliers as EU rises over delays
France and Germany on Sunday threatened legal action against AstraZeneca when they scrambled to explain their vaccine shortages and warned that any firm that preferred British orders for the jabs would be punished. Clement Beaune, the French Minister for Europe, has threatened sanctions against the Anglo-Swedish firm, which manufactures the Oxford vaccine, if Britain appears to be given priority. “If there is a problem and other countries are preferred – for example the UK over us – then we will defend our interests,” he said. Beaune said Sunday. “Contracts are not moral commitments, they are legal commitments. Fines or sanctions can be imposed in every contract.” This came when Berlin and Rome issued similar threats to vaccine suppliers, in the last phase of a bitter row in Europe due to delays in the production and delivery of Covid samples. “If we realize that individual companies are not maintaining their side of the bargain, we need to make a decision on legal measures,” Peter Altmaier, the German economy minister, told Die Welt newspaper. Mr Altmaier, a close confidante of Chancellor Angela Merkel, also warned vaccine producers that “it is by no means acceptable for another country to be elected retroactively over the EU”. AstraZeneca says it will deliver 4.6 million doses to France by the end of March, which is half the amount initially agreed upon. It also significantly lowered its EU delivery targets for the first quarter of the year, leading to a furious reaction from Brussels, accusing the company of offering preferential treatment to the UK. Among the sanctions France is considering are the withholding of payments, the cancellation of subsequent orders and the compensation of breach of contract. Mr Beaune said investigations had already been launched into the delivery of vaccines to Britain by EU-based factories. As the third wave of coronavirus spreads across the continent, French President Emmanuel Macron resists calls for a third exclusion and has rather tightened existing restrictions. “If you are French, you have everything you need to be successful, provided you dare to try,” he told ministers on Friday, although the refusal to declare a complete exclusion was contrary to the recommendations. of his own scientific advisers. Polish police launched tear gas and stun grenades over the weekend as they closed illegal discos and parties in the cities of Wroclaw and Rybnik. As in other European cities, some businesses started trading in defiance of the rules, while protests over Covid restrictions broke out in the Netherlands, Spain, France and Denmark. Dutch police arrested at least 30 people in Amsterdam on Sunday as they struggled to prevent a new outbreak of riots against the closure. Thousands of protesters also took to the streets of Vienna over the weekend to take part in a protest against the closure of a right-wing group. Similar scenes took place in Hungary, where a group of 100 restaurants said they would reopen despite threats of heavy fines from the government. Over the weekend it also emerged that Boris Johnson had forced the EU to make two vaccinations on vaccines after Brussels tried to reach doses in a Belgian factory in the UK, and moved around a hard border in Northern Ireland on to lie for the same purpose. During two telephone conversations with Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, Johnson allegedly persuaded the EU head to abandon both proposals, reports the Mail on Sunday. Michaál Martin, the Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister), told the BBC on Sunday that they were “blinded” by the EU threat to close the border. “The problem is that the commission used the wrong mechanism to repeal Article 16 of the protocol to deal with it,” he said, adding that “many lessons can be learned” about the provision of vaccines. Sunday night, me. Von der Leyen announced on Twitter that the EU will increase its vaccine supply this week. “[AstraZeneca] will deliver 9 million additional doses (40 million in total) in the first quarter compared to last week’s supply and will start deliveries a week earlier than scheduled. The company will also expand its manufacturing capacity in Europe, ‘she wrote.