Last checked at 
(Adds French government source)
BRUSSELS/PARIS, April 22 (Reuters) - French vaccine maker
Valneva has not met the conditions to conclude talks on
a deal with the European Union to supply the bloc with its
COVID-19 vaccine candidate, a spokesman for the European
Commission said on Thursday.
The French biotech, which has already struck a supply deal
with Britain and is manufacturing doses in Scotland, said on
Wednesday it had switched to bilateral talks with governments
after negotiations failed for a deal with the EU as a whole.
"When companies want their vaccines to be integrated in our
vaccines portfolio, a certain set of conditions has to be
respected," the Commission spokesman told a news conference.
The French government has come under fire at home for
failing to secure doses from a domestic company, after other
great French names such as Sanofi or the Pasteur Institute ran
into their own difficulties in producing a COVID vaccine.
A source within the French government said France may
consider striking a bilateral deal with Valneva for supplies
beyond 2021, but only if it becomes certain the EU will not sign
its own deal.
"It's not the end of the story," the French government
source told Reuters, on condition of anonymity. But it added
that many EU countries feared Valneva would favour Britain over
the EU, as they suspect AstraZeneca did.
"The fear of an AstraZeneca scenario is leaving many member
states unimpressed," the source said. "However, negotiations
with the EU are not over."
Among the conditions cited by the EU for failing to reach a
deal earlier on Thursday were "solid protection in the areas of
liability safety, effectiveness of the vaccine and also solid
rules and arrangements for the delivery of the vaccines."
"After a year of negotiations the company has not, at this
stage, succeeded to meet these conditions, which is one of the
reasons why we have not yet reached an agreement," the
Commission spokesman said.
The EU concluded exploratory talks with the French company
in January for the supply of up to 60 million doses of its
vaccine candidate, of which 30 million were to be an option.
(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio @fraguarascio and Jan
Strupczewski in Brussels and Michel Rose in Paris; Editing by
Kevin Liffey, William Maclean)
