Pfizer has won a legal battle with Poland and Romania over orders for its coronavirus vaccine, with a Belgian court ordering the two countries to pay 1.9 billion euros ($2.2 billion).
A court of first instance in Brussels ruled Wednesday that Poland must pay the New York-based drugmaker about 1.3 billion euros ($1.5 billion), while Romania is liable for about 600 million euros ($691 million), according to reports.
Poland will not take this order quietly and will use “all available legal remedies to overturn this judgment and protect its interests,” the country’s Health Ministry announced in an April 1 release.
The Ministry of Health said the state has the right to appeal the judgment in a new procedure that allows for existing and new “legal and factual claims,” noting that further steps will be taken after a detailed analysis of the judgment and consultation with legal representatives.
Meanwhile, Pfizer said the court’s decision “reflects the importance of the contractual obligations that underpinned Europe’s successful pandemic response, which was built on principles of solidarity among member states,” a spokesperson told Fierce Pharma in an emailed statement.
The company is demanding that several European countries honor its original 2021 coronavirus vaccine ordering agreements, and is suing Poland and Romania for failing to pay for millions of doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s Colminati vaccine in 2023, alleging “protracted breach of contract.”
The vaccine ordering fiasco stems from a massive coronavirus supply deal struck by the European Commission in May 2021, for 900 million doses to be delivered in installments in 2022-2023. European authorities exercised an option for additional doses in December 2021 and signed on to receive a further 200 million doses of the vaccine, scheduled for delivery in 2022. The agreement was subsequently investigated by the European Court of Auditors based on the nature and content of the negotiations. Concerns over text messages between European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla leading up to the deal.
A group of European countries, including Poland, expressed “deep concern” over large vaccine orders as coronavirus cases around the world begin to decline. In 2023, countries sought a “new and fairer agreement” to fix the surplus of previously ordered vaccine doses, Euractic reported at the time.
Poland, meanwhile, has already expressed opposition to the 2022 vaccine mandate, with former Health Minister Adam Niedzielski invoking the contract’s force majeure clause and refusing to pay for or receive additional shots amid an influx of Ukrainian refugees fleeing Russian aggression, citing the country’s financial crisis.
Ultimately, a Brussels court order rejected Poland and Romania’s arguments against the vaccine order, finding that the decline in coronavirus infections across the country and the impact on Poland of the war in Ukraine did not justify invalidating the contract, Bloomberg reported. The court also found that the countries failed to prove that Pfizer abused its dominant market position.
Along with the monetary payments, countries were ordered to receive deliveries of coronavirus vaccines.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk slammed his predecessor, Mateusz Jakub Morawiecki, writing that Poland “must pay the price for this extreme stupidity” because “the Morawiecki government ordered the coronavirus vaccine but did not receive it or pay for it.”
Romanian Health Minister Alexander Rogovete similarly blamed the current situation on “inappropriate decisions taken at the time by the previous government,” Turkish news outlet Hürriyet Daily News reported in a press conference on Wednesday.
The European Union ultimately signed an agreement with Pfizer and BioNTech to reduce the number of doses purchased under the original contract in 2023 to meet “evolving needs,” European officials said at the time. In 2024, Bourla linked contract volatility and vaccine uncertainty to a “significant overhang” to the company’s stock performance.
“We had multibillion-dollar contracts with multiple governments around the world, and we signed them and all of a sudden we had second thoughts about respecting governments because they are governments,” he said at the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference, adding, “One of the most famous ones is from the European Union.”
