Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan announced on Thursday that Romania will contact Pfizer, with which he will start a negotiation, considering that some "thoughtless decisions turn against them in a longer or shorter time".
"Unfortunately, we received the news of the sentence in the first instance, unfortunately enforceable by the Belgian Court, under which we have to pay Pfizer for the vaccine doses that we contracted during the pandemic years - an important amount, which is almost RON 3.5 billion plus daily penalties. What we have to do as soon as possible, in the coming days, is to get in touch with the Pfizer company, to start a negotiation, to block the payment of interest and to see how we can find a formula for this payment to be made in a staggered manner. And we are also consulting with the team of lawyers, because in this situation Poland is also in an identical situation - on the same day we had two joint lawsuits, Romania and Poland. Poland also lost. So, we are consulting on what is to be done next ," Bolojan told Europa FM private radio broadcaster.
According to the prime minister, "this happens when, being in government, wrong decisions are sometimes taken, unthought decisions, which turn against us in a longer or shorter time."
"That happened, unfortunately, in connection with this situation as well," he said.
Asked about who to blame, Bolojan replied: "I asked the Ministry of Finance, which worked together with the lawyers in the defence of Romania in this case, and the Ministry of Health to make a situation, because it seems common sense to me that the public opinion has a chronology as accurate as possible of what happened."
The prime minister stressed that too many doses of vaccine were ordered and that the main decision was taken by the government led by Florin Citu.
"Without knowing all the details, we certainly ordered too many doses as against what we needed. I understand that there were over 100 million doses, which is much more than the population of our country. We didn't sell them when we could still sell them or solve certain problems. We didn't renegotiate with this company immediately, when things were hot, as other countries managed to do and, unfortunately, we didn't evolve in these years either. And we have reached this situation. So, it is an accumulation of responsibilities and, of course, but the main decision to contract too many doses was taken during the tenure of the Citu government. That's a fact," said Bolojan.
Regarding the fact that former Minister of Health Alexandru Rafila should have negotiated with Pfizer, the Prime Minister showed that, "since that date, being already quite many years, there have been several opportunities for renegotiation, for closing things, which, once they were missed, led us to atrial that was resolved in the first instance, unfortunately, enforceable."
"It is difficult for me now to apportion personal responsibilities on one person or another, but as I told you, when you are in a public office and you have a great responsibility, you have to think very carefully about what you do, because of your statements, the signing of documents by you, the non-analysis of them or the postponement of decisions, which you can put into practice or not, you see, subsequent results or very high costs that, in one way or another, the public pay, directly or indirectly," the prime minister said.
On Wednesday, a court in Brussels sentenced, in the first instance, Poland and Romania to pay an outstanding balance for the anti-COVID vaccines ordered from the pharmaceutical group Pfizer/BioNTech, amounting to EUR 1.3 billion euros and 600 million euros respectively, according to a press statement from the court cited by the AFP French news agency.
The American pharmaceutical company Pfizer sued the two countries in the fall of 2023 to impose the execution of these purchase contracts, which, following the end of the pandemic, Poland and Romania refused fully implement.
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