> Just like the UK is doing what it needs to do to have his contract fulfilled
the UK isn't doing anything special. they just signed a better contract than the other guys.
what the EU should have done is recognised their mistake and fix it via a massive injection of funds. instead they decided to fund the recovery and penny-pinch on the vaccines.
in any case, this whole non-issue is politicising of the lowest degree. the EU will get more vaccines than Africa or Asia as a whole in a few weeks, making this whole discussion moot.
>the UK isn't doing anything special. they just signed a better contract than the other guys.
This is yet another one of those narratives pumped by British media: "the better contract". This is meaningless, because AZ still signed a contract with the EU that clearly states that no other commitment should overlap with such contract. So they are either forcefully or willingly choosing to fulfill some contracts over others - none of those reasons is an excuse. That's AZ problem, not EU problem.
In case you didn't notice it's only working for vaccines made in the UK (which according to AZ CEO the UK didn't allow any exports of that production).
Basically the UK is enforcing the company to fulfill their contractual obligations, where they have power to enforce it, which is in the UK, and that's fine.
But you can't expect other countries not to do the exact same thing - which is what the EU is doing. And now Boris is lobbying around to try to stop this, and of course the short-sighted vaccine nationalism of not allowing the company to fulfill other contracts came around to slap him in the face.
There's no goodwill towards Boris government, and now they want to make a deal with no leverage, after months of bashing the EU for trusting a free market and a private company while the UK hoarded the full local production without any transparency (yes those records are private for "security reasons").
the UK isn't doing anything special. they just signed a better contract than the other guys.
what the EU should have done is recognised their mistake and fix it via a massive injection of funds. instead they decided to fund the recovery and penny-pinch on the vaccines.
in any case, this whole non-issue is politicising of the lowest degree. the EU will get more vaccines than Africa or Asia as a whole in a few weeks, making this whole discussion moot.