Alexandru Rafila, the Minister of Health, conveyed to the Parliament on Thursday that the selection procedure for the company that will represent Romania in Brussels in this process, in connection with the lawsuit filed by Pfizer against the Romanian state, has been completed.
The first term is on February 20 – Photo Shutterstock
The Minister of Health declared that the law firm that will represent the Romanian state in the process in which Pfizer and BioNTech accuse Romania of not having respected its part of the agreement from the contract signed in May 2021, for the purchase of anti-Covid-19 vaccines, has been chosen.
“As far as I know, you are well aware that the Government of Romania approved the Ministry of Finance to represent the Romanian state in this commercial dispute and in other disputes, only in this one, as far as I know, the procedure for choosing and selecting the company to represent the state has been completed Romanian in Brussels in this process, so we are on the right track. It is important that this happens as quickly as possible, considering that February 20 is the first appearance. But the Ministry of Health is ready to provide all the information and, please, the documents that are needed by the law firm“, said the minister, according to Agerpres.
Alexandru Rafila specified that even now he does not know “all details” related to the initial contract concluded by the European Commission with the supplier companies, but the company representing Romania will have access to this document, because it is an important element in the procedural basis for the litigation, which will be judged in Brussels.
“It had a degree of confidentiality and I have not seen this document in its entirety“, Rafila also claimed, according to the quoted source.
Incidentally, the minister was asked if he had signed an order for Pfizer vaccines.
“It has nothing to do with it, because I didn't give any orders. It is a contractual commitment of Romania that was assumed in May 2021. The order you refer to allowed us to sell part of the doses. If we did not do this, the amount was more than 550 million euros“, he answered.
The Romanian state was sued for non-compliance with the contract signed for the purchase of vaccines against Covid-19 by the companies Pfizer and BioNTech. At the end of last year, the Pfizer company notified the Romanian state regarding the opening of a litigation for the recovery of some sums of money, considering the non-finalization of the purchase by the Romanian side of 28 million doses of anti-Covid vaccine, and the first deadline will follow in February, mentioned the spokesman of the Government, Mihai Constantin, last month. Not only Romania is in such a situation, but also other countries in Europe, such as Poland and Hungary.
