NEW: the EU has challenged AstraZeneca to spell out where its has sent vaccines so far. Stella Kyriakides, EU health commissioner: "The new AstraZeneca vaccine schedule is not acceptable to the EU." Kyriakides says she wrote letter to AZ asking "important and serious" questions:
2/ Kyriakides: "The EU has prefinanced the development of the vaccine and its production and wants to see its return. The EU wants to know exactly which doses have been produced where by AstraZeneca so far, and if, or to whom, they have been delivered.
3/ "These questions were also discussed today in the Joint Steering Board of the Commission and the 27 member states with AstraZeneca. The answers of the company have not been satisfactory so far. That's why a second meeting is scheduled for tonight.
4/ "The EU wants the ordered and prefinanced vaccines delivered as soon as possible + we want our contract to be fully fulfilled. In addition the Commission has proposed to the 27 MS... that an export transparency mechanism will be put in place as soon as possible.
5/ "We want clarity on transactions and full transparency concerning the export of vaccines from the EU. In the future, all companies producing vaccines against Covid 19 in the EU will have to provide early notification whenever they want to export vaccines to third countries.
6/ "Humanitarian deliveries are not affected. The EU will take any action required to protect its citizens and rights."
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
.@SKyriakidesEU: In our contract it is not specified that any country, or the UK, has priority because it signed earlier. Our contract foresees a quarter by quarter schedule.
If this was the case [ie, because the UK signed earlier] AZ should have proposed a clause in the contract acknowledging that they would have prioritised deliveries to the UK, but here is no such clause
Commissioner says: the numbers shared with us on Fri [by AZ] did not correspond with what was in the advanced purchase agreement and to what we expected.
NEW: EU official says EU has contacted AstraZeneca to seek approval to publish vaccine contract
Official says the company has been "very, very" protective of the contract, so it is "surprising" that Pascal Soriot revealed elements of the contract in the interview with Die Welt and La Republicca
Emer Cooke, EMA: only thing EMA can do in terms of production capacity is to work with companies and MS to ensure new manufacturing sites become available as soon as possible
"We will do everything we can to facilitate production from a scientific and regulator perspective"
Cooke: (AstraZeneca) Studies done have a very small quantity of elderly populations. Our scientific committee is looking at the totality of the data to see what that data means in terms of the populations that are studied
Here are some observations from the EU side on the touring issue facing musicians bbc.com/news/entertain…
2/ The European Commission offered the UK a standard mobility clause in its draft legal text back in March last year that would cover musicians, sportspersons etc... It's on page 354 of the EU's opening text ahead of the negotiations ec.europa.eu/info/sites/inf…
3/ Under a standard mobility clause, acc to one official, EU member states can ask for visas for certain people coming to carry out paid activity. However, there's a list of exemptions for people who don't need visas:
EU diplomat say ambassadors will discuss the governance of the EU-UK TCA on Friday, esp the new Joint Partnership Council, its 30 subcommittees, its relationship with the Commission, the role of member state.
2/ Diplomat says it is natural for the EU to need more time beyond the end of February deadline to ratify the treaty, which is currently being applied provisionally...
3/ Diplomat says it normally takes quite a number of months to get such a treaty translated into the 23 languages. "It’s going to be quite diff to achieve this by the end of Feb, we might have to come to a decision to prolong that. I’ll leave it up to the Commisison first.
The EU will seek an extension to the deadline by which the free trade agreement with the UK must be ratified, @rtenews has learned.
Two sources have said member states want to extend the deadline from the end of Feb to some time in April.
2/ RTE News also understands that the Slovak Commissioner Maros Sefcovic, who is an executive vice president of the Commission, will be the EU’s representative on the new Joint Parternship Council (JPC) which will manage the new relationship with the UK.
3/ Sefcovic is already the EU chair of the Joint Committee, which has been overseeing the implementation of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement, including the Northern Ireland Protocol.