The European Union has completed negotiations with the American Pfizer and the German BioNTech and will sign a contract “in the coming days” for the purchase of 300 million doses of their vaccine against Covid, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety Stella Kyriakides told reporters.
“I believe the agreement will be approved by the College of Commissioners on Wednesday, while procedures will follow for three or four days to ensure the green light of the Member States and then we will sign,” the European commissioner explained.
The European Commission had reached a preliminary agreement in early September with the two companies to pre-order 200 million doses of their vaccine, with the option to supply an additional 100 million doses.
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“The Commission will have to decide on Wednesday whether or not to accept the agreement on the table and it will then be sent to the Member States, who will decide how much they want to buy under the contract,” the representative of the Commission said.
According to Kyriakides, there is a plan to distribute the available batches based on the population of each country.
The distribution will be subject to the approval of the European regulatory authority, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), which has not yet received the Pfizer / BioNTech clinical trial data: it will consider it for an opinion to the Commission, which will decide for the marketing authorization of the vaccine.
