The European Union has introduced tighter rules on exports of COVID-19 vaccines amid a deepening dispute with drug maker AstraZeneca over supplies of potentially lifesaving shots.
But the bloc backed down on a plan to use emergency Brexit measures to restrict exports of COVID-19 vaccines through the Irish border to the United Kingdom after it sent shock waves through Northern Ireland, London and Dublin.
In a steep escalation of the EU’s fight to secure vaccine supplies, Brussels had said it would trigger clauses in the Northern Irish Protocol to prevent shots moving across the open border between EU-member Ireland and the British-run province.
Following an outcry in London, Belfast and Dublin, the EU said late on Friday it would ensure the Northern Ireland Protocol, designed to keep the border open, would not be affected.
It warned, however, that should vaccines and active substances move towards third countries and out of the bloc, it would use “all the instruments at its disposal”.
The reversal followed a round of frantic calls as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen of his “grave concerns” while Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin spoke to Mr Johnson and the EU chief to find a solution.
Earlier, the bloc and AstraZeneca made public a heavily redacted version of their vaccine deal that is at the heart of a dispute over the delivery schedule.
The contract allows the EU’s member countries to buy 300 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, with an option for a further 100 million doses. It’s one of several contracts the EU’s executive branch has with vaccine makers to secure a total of more than two billion shots.
The EU lashed out at the British-Swedish drug maker this week after it said it would only supply 31 million doses of vaccine in initial shipments, instead of the 80 million doses it had hoped to deliver.
The European Commission is concerned that doses meant for Europe might have been diverted from an AstraZeneca plant on the continent to the UK, where two other company sites are located. The EU also wants doses at two sites in Britain to be made available to European citizens.
AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot told Germany’s Die Welt this week the UK government helped create the vaccine developed with Oxford University and signed its contract three months before the EU did. Mr Soriot said that under the British contract, vaccines produced at UK sites must go to the UK first.
To head off similar disputes, the commission introduced measures on Friday to tighten the export rules of shots produced in the 27 EU countries.
“We paid these companies to increase production and now we expect them to deliver,” EU Commission vice-president Valdis Dombrovskis told reporters.
“Today’s measure has been adopted with the utmost urgency. The aim is to provide us immediately with full transparency…. And if needed, it also will provide us with a tool to ensure vaccine deliveries.”
The “vaccine export transparency mechanism” will be used until the end of March to control shipments to non-EU countries and ensure any exporting company based in the EU first submits its plans to national authorities.
The World Health Organization said the move was part of a “very worrying trend” that could jeopardise the global supply chain for vaccines.
“It is not helpful to have any country at this stage putting export bans or export barriers that will not allow for the free movement of the necessary ingredients that will make vaccines, diagnostics and other medicines available to all the world,” Mariangela Simao, WHO assistant director for access to medicines and health product, said.
The EU insists it is not an export ban, although it could be used to block shipments to the UK or other non-EU countries.
Officials said the mechanism would not affect humanitarian deliveries and shipments to countries covered by the COVAX initiative co-led by the World Health Organization.
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