Glad to see that an attorney is picking out the same clauses that I did as being the most relevant!
There seems to be a big debate going back and forth online about whether that warrants clause does indeed screw over AZ or not. And I haven't yet seen any Belgian lawyers weigh in on it.
But it does make me question why on earth AZ agreed to that warranty. I would have wanted to go the other way and add a Whereas clause that explicitly stated that they add another contractual obligation that might affect their ability to deliver on this contract. It's not as if they were up against the wall in negotiations - the EU desperately wanted their product, and so whilst they might have objected to a clause that clarified that the UK had first dibs on UK-produced vaccine, I think they would have had to eventually agree with it.
No doubt.
I don't think there's any doubt that AZ would be in breach of their contract with the UK if they took UK vaccine stock before the UK order was fulfilled.
The question is just why the hell didn't they protect themselves more by referencing this arrangement in their EU contract? Would have saved themselves a whole lot of legal hand-wringing! And maybe from a lawsuit.
Probably! At the very least, they're walking a legal tightrope between the two agreements that seems to me to be totally unnecessary (if they had a competent contracting team).
