EU sues AstraZeneca over alleged failure to supply COVID vaccines

Move follows months of rows between Brussels and the British-Swedish company over troubled delivery of vaccine doses.

The European Union has launched legal action against AstraZeneca over the pharmaceutical giant’s alleged failure to respect its contract for the supply of COVID-19 vaccines to the bloc. The British-Swedish company’s vaccine was envisaged as a central part of Europe’s mass immunisation campaign, and a linchpin in the global strategy to get coronavirus vaccines to poorer countries because it is being cheaper and easier to use than shots produced by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. But Brussels and the business have been at loggerheads over an alleged shortfall of deliveries, a division that has in part hobbled early efforts to roll out jabs within the bloc.