European Commission - Press release

Coronavirus: Commission reaches first agreement on a potential vaccine

Brussels, 14 August 2020
Today, the European Commission has reached a first agreement with the pharmaceutical company
AstraZeneca to purchase a potential vaccine against COVID-19 as well as to donate to lower and
middle income countries or re-direct to other European countries. This is following the positive steps
regarding the conclusion of exploratory talks with Sanofi-GSK announced on 31 July and with
Johnson & Johnson on 13 August. Once the vaccine has proven to be safe and effective against
COVID-19, the Commission now has agreed the basis for a contractual framework for the purchase of
300 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, with an option to purchase 100 million more, on behalf
of EU Member States. The Commission continues discussing similar agreements with other vaccine
manufacturers.
Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, said: “The European Commission's
intense negotiations continue to achieve results. Today's agreement is the first cornerstone in
implementing the European Commission's Vaccines Strategy. This strategy will enable us to provide
future vaccines to Europeans, as well as our partners elsewhere in the world.”
Stella Kyriakides, Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, said: “Today, after weeks of
negotiations, we have the first EU advance purchase agreement for a vaccine candidate. I would like
to thank AstraZeneca for its constructive engagement on this important agreement for our citizens.
We will continue to work tirelessly to bring more candidates into a broad EU vaccines portfolio. A safe
and effective vaccine remains the surest exit strategy to protect our citizens and the rest of the world
from the coronavirus.”
The agreement approved today will be financed with the Emergency Support Instrument, which has
funds dedicated to the creation of a portfolio of potential vaccines with different profiles and
produced by different companies.
AstraZeneca's vaccine candidate is already in large-scale Phase II/III Clinical Trials after promising
results in Phase I/II concerning safety and immunogenicity.
The decision to support the vaccine proposed by AstraZeneca is based on a sound scientific approach
and the technology used (a non-replicative recombinant chimpanzee adenovirus-based vaccine
ChAdOx1), speed at delivery at scale, cost, risk sharing, liability and the production capacity able to
supply the whole of the EU, among others.
The regulatory processes will be flexible but remain robust. Together with the Member States and the
European Medicines Agency, the Commission will use existing flexibilities in the EU's regulatory
framework to accelerate the authorisation and availability of successful vaccines against COVID-19.
This includes an accelerated procedure for authorisation and flexibility in relation to labelling and
packaging.
Background
The European Commission presented on 17 June a European strategy to accelerate the development,
manufacturing and deployment of effective and safe vaccines against COVID-19. In return for the
right to buy a specified number of vaccine doses in a given timeframe, the Commission would
finance part of the upfront costs faced by vaccines producers in the form of Advance Purchase
Agreements. Funding provided would be considered as a down-payment on the vaccines that will
actually be purchased by Member States.
Since the high cost and high failure rate make investing in a COVID-19 vaccine a high-risk decision
for vaccine developers, these agreement will therefore allow investments to be made that otherwise
would simply probably not happen.
The European Commission is also committed to ensuring that everyone who needs a vaccine gets it,
anywhere in the world and not only at home. No one will be safe until everyone is safe. This is why it
has raised almost €16 billion since 4 May 2020 under the Coronavirus Global Response, the global
action for universal access to tests, treatments and vaccines against coronavirus and for the global
recovery.
More Information
EU Vaccines Strategy
EU Coronavirus Response
IP/20/1438

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