EU and Pfizer/BioNTech Reach Agreement on Amendment of Vaccine Supply Contract

The European Union and pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and BioNTech have announced that they have reached an agreement to amend the contract for the procurement of the COVID-19 vaccine, reducing the quantity that the EU must purchase and extending the delivery deadline to 2026, although the details of the contract are not known.

The agreement between the two parties was reached after months of negotiations and amid pressure from European governments on Brussels to secure a contract amendment due to the decline in coronavirus cases worldwide and low demand for booster doses.

Some European countries have already destroyed their doses, Reuters reports.

European Commissioner for Health Stella Kyriakides welcomed the achievement of the agreement to meet current needs.

She has been calling on EU member states for more than two months to support the amendment to the contract negotiated by the Commission.

The Commission announced on Friday that some member states decided to reject the amended contract, without specifying which ones.

These countries will remain under the current contract, the statement said. A source from the Commission told Reuters that this refers to Hungary and Poland.

The original contract was signed in May 2021 and obligated the EU to purchase 900 million doses of Pfizer and BioNTech vaccines, with an option for an additional 900 million by the end of 2023.

About half of the first 900 million doses from the contract have yet to be delivered as demand fell last year. The EU did not activate the additional option.

The statements from the European Commission and the two companies do not specify the exact percentage reduction in delivery, but a source familiar with the negotiations said it concerns one-third of the remaining doses.

EU member states will have to pay a fee for each canceled dose, the source said, without specifying how much it would be. Neither the Commission nor the two companies wanted to comment on this.

Pfizer earned a record $100.3 billion in 2022 in its 174-year history, while it is expected to earn between $67 billion and $71 billion this year, the Financial Times reported earlier this year.