EU Expands Its Vaccine Export Control Regime Around 'Reciprocity' and 'Proportionality'
The European Union is expanding its control over exports of COVID-19 vaccines made in the bloc and is now basing its decision to block exports on “reciprocity” and “proportionality,” the European Commission announced in a March 24 news release. The EC will consider whether the destination country restricts its own exports of vaccines or their components and whether the COVID-19 infection and vaccination rates in the target country are better or worse than the EU's, it said. The EC said it also will consider whether a vaccine export will threaten the EU's inoculation rate. Seventeen countries previously exempt from restrictions are now under export control while 92 low- and middle-income countries remain exempt, it said.
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The commission's action comes as British vaccine developer AstraZeneca is supplying the EU with fewer doses than its Advance Purchase Agreement promised, delivering only half of the promised 30 million doses by the end of March. The EU and the United Kingdom also have been trading jabs over vaccine exports (see 2103090047). The EC introduced the concept of reciprocity for vaccine shipments in part because the U.K. has yet to ship a single vaccine to the EU while the bloc has sent nearly 11 million to Britain since AstraZeneca has vaccine manufacturing plants in the U.K., Belgium and the Netherlands. This is all set on the backdrop of the U.K.'s inoculation rate being higher than the EU's (see 2103230061). The EU said it has approved over 380 vaccine export requests to 33 different destinations totaling around 43 million doses.
The 17 countries now included in the export control regime are Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Israel, Jordan, Iceland, Lebanon, Libya, Liechtenstein, Montenegro, Norway, North Macedonia, Serbia and Switzerland.