Italian PM threatens legal action against Pfizer over distribution delay

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has threatened to sue COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers for delaying the distribution of new doses to the European countries. Conte shared a fiery post on Facebook, accusing vaccine manufacturers of violating contractual commitments that were agreed with the European Commission last year. Conte said that companies, including Pfizer-BioNTech, have reported a slowdown in the distribution to European countries, including Italy, adding "this is unacceptable". 

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"This is unacceptable. Our vaccination plan, approved by the Italian Parliament and ratified even in the State-Regions Conference, has been drawn up on the basis of contractual commitments freely made and signed by pharmaceutical companies with the European Commission. We will use all instruments and legal initiatives, as we are already doing with Pfizer-BioNTech, to claim contractual commitments and to protect our national community in every form," Conte said in his Facebook post. 

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'Serious contractual violations' 

Conte said that British firm AstraZeneca, whose vaccine has not been approved by the European Commission yet, has also informed the bloc that it would cut deliveries by 60% due to production delays. Conte said if the 60% reduction in doses is confirmed, it would mean only 3.4 million shots will be delivered to Italy instead of 8 million in the first quarter. "These delays in deliveries constitute serious contractual violations, causing enormous damage to Italy and other European countries, with direct impacts on the lives and health of citizens and on our economic and social fabric already strongly felt by a year of a pandemic," Conte said. The European Medicine Agency (EMA) is expected to approve AstraZeneca's vaccine by end of this month. 

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The European Union is distributing Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna's COVID-19 vaccines to countries that are members of the bloc. Meanwhile, Italy ranks eighth in the world and second among the European states in terms of the number of vaccine doses administered so far. Italy has inoculated over 1.3 million people to date, of which more than 40,000 have completed the full vaccination cycle with a second dose. 

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