BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Valneva has not met the conditions to conclude talks on a deal to the European Union with its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, a spokesman for the European Commission said on Thursday.
The company said on Wednesday it had switched to bilateral talks with governments after negotiations failed for a deal with the EU as a whole.
“When companies want their vaccines to be integrated in our vaccines portfolio, a certain set of conditions has to be respected,” the Commission spokesman told a news conference.
Among the conditions are “solid protection in the areas of liability safety, effectiveness of the vaccine and also solid rules and arrangements for the delivery of the vaccines”, the spokesman said.
“After a year of negotiations the company has not, at this stage, succeeded to meet these conditions, which is one of the reasons why we have not yet reached an agreement.”
The EU concluded exploratory talks with the French company in January for the supply of up to 60 million doses of its vaccine candidate, of which 30 million were to be an option.
(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio @fraguarascio and Jan Strupczewski; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
