Worth noting by Sandra Gallina, EU's chief vaccine negotiator: last year the Commission entered advanced purchase agreements with pharma companies, ie buying doses of vaccines which did not yet exist.
2/ In order to conclude the contract the pharma companies needed a commitment of a certain amount of doses, ie an incentive to research + produce, so they would need a commitment to produce 300m doses for example
3/ However, as the negotiator, the European Commission needed to be sure the doses were being bought by member states. At the beginning, member states had to decide whether to stay in or out of the programme.
4/ Member states had to collectively decide if they could stay in only on the basis of a pro-rata distribution, ie did they have to keep all doses on the basis of population? Or could they stay in the programme and get fewer doses than pro-rata?
5/ Gallina says the trend last year among member states was to have fewer doses than pro-rata, again, because they were committing money to vaccines that did not yet exist.
6/ It was then agreed that other member states could "soak up" the excess doses gather from those member states who were taking fewer doses than their pro-rata allocation
7/ Gallina says this was an example of the principle of solidarity: ie, some member states would pay more to pick up extra doses of vaccines that did not yet exist
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