As I understand the conflict: EU negotiated a lower price than UK, but both parties got contracts guaranteeing a certain number of doses. When AstraZeneca got production problems which meant they couldn't fulfill all the promised deliveries, they decided to fully honor the UK contract and cut delivery to EU severely. This infuriated the EU, and they threatened blocking export of the vaccines produced in the EU.
More fun if it turns out the AstraZeneca vaccine is useless.
Where do you get this idea that contracts guaranteed a certain number of deliveries? The contract the EU signed said best effort everywhere.
Why would AZ agree to a contract to guarantee certain deliveries on a brand new vaccine with unproven manufacturing, on a non-profit basis? It doesn't make any sense.
The other thing which isn't mentioned is the UK's deliveries were also cut, probably even more severely than the EU ones. The UK was originally meant to get many tens of millions of doses by the end of 2020, in reality it was far far less.
> AstraZeneca has reduced its projected vaccine rollout to the EU, despite signing a contract to supply millions of doses, citing an issue with a plant in Belgium. It did not, however, cut its supplies to the UK.
My understanding is that while the EU contract said something like "best effort" the UK negotiated stricter language for their contract, which meant that when AZ lawyers interpreted both contracts together they concluded that they had to priorities the UK.
> The contract the EU signed said best effort everywhere.
If the contract really said best effort everywhere, they may have a leg to stand on, since that seems to preclude using different delivery guarantees in other contracts.
More fun if it turns out the AstraZeneca vaccine is useless.