Indemnity and civil liability clauses in Advance Purchase Agreements for potential COVID-19 vaccines
26.8.2020
Priority question for written answer P-004650/2020
to the Commission
Rule 138
Marc Botenga (GUE/NGL)
Referring to an internal memo, the press has reported that Vaccines Europe, the European pharmaceutical industry’s vaccines lobby, has pushed the European Union for far-reaching exemptions from civil liability to protect its members from lawsuits if there are dangerous side effects from administering COVID-19 vaccines acquired through Advance Purchase Agreements. The Commission was quoted as saying that in the Advance Purchase Agreements for potential COVID-19 vaccines, it was looking for Member States to indemnify pharmaceutical companies for ‘certain liabilities’ ‘in order to compensate for such high risks taken by manufacturers [1] .’ These exemptions would thus transfer civil liability to the public.
- 1.Will the Commission publish the Advanced Purchase Agreements in order to guarantee full transparency in the use of public funds?
- 2.Can the Commission disclose the exact wording of the liability and indemnity clauses for each Advance Purchase Agreement?
- 3.Moreover, given that the Advance Purchase Agreements also de-risk necessary investments related to both vaccine development and clinical trials, as well as the preparation of at-scale production capacity along the entire vaccine production chain [2] , what exactly does the Commission mean by the ‘high risks’ taken by pharmaceutical companies?