The important difference between AstraZeneca's relationship with the UK and with the EU, and the reason it has fallen behind schedule on 50m vaccine doses promised to the EU, is that the UK agreed the deal with AZ a full three months before the EU did - which gave...

AZ an extra three months to sort out manufacturing and supply problems relating to the UK contract (there were plenty of problems). Here is the important timeline. In May AZ reached agreement with Oxford and the UK government to make and supply the vaccine. In fact Oxford...

had already started work on the supply chain. The following month AZ reached a preliminary agreement with Germany, the Netherlands, France and Italy, a group known as the Inclusive Vaccine Alliance, based on the agreement with the UK. The announcement was 13 June. BUT the EU...

insisted that the Inclusive Vaccine Alliance could not formalise the deal. The European Commission insisted it should take over the contract negotiations on behalf of the whole EU. So were another two months of talks and the contract was not signed till the end of August...

What is frustrating for AZ is that the extra talks with the European Commission led to no material changes to the contract, but wasted time on making arrangements to make the vaccine with partner sites. The yield at these partner sites has been lower than expected. The problem...

There is a ton of contradictory stuff flying around about what @MichelBarnier says is the EU's bottom line for fair competition in any free trade agreement with the UK. As I understand it, what follows is the EU's position. For the "level playing field commitments" there...

should be "non regression" - ie on standards for working practices, environmental etc, the UK must stick to current EU rules, subject to tests and the risk of legal challenge if there is a perceived breach of the obligations. And the non-regression rules apply to the EU as...

well as to the UK. They are mutual symmetrical obligations in that sense. The requirements not to give unfair subsidies to businesses, the state aid rules, are different, and more complicated, because subsidies to businesses given out of EU funds (as opposed to national funds)...

are not subject to state aid rules. So Barnier is proposing a solution to that "UK problem", such that the state obligations would be seen to bind both the UK and the EU. The big point is that @MichelBarnier seems to be trying hard to create a framework in which the...

obligations to engage in fair competition bind both the UK and the EU, and are not simply the big bad EU imposing its will on the UK. The baseline for both at the start of any free trade agreement would be the same, and subject to the same processes to prevent unfair...