The Foundation For The Defense Of The Citizens Against Citizens Against State Abuses will file a lawsuit to recover the more than 600 million euros that the Romanian state has been obliged to pay in the lawsuit with Pfizer, from the parties who signed the contract in question, as well as from those who have remained impassive towards this contractual situation throughout this period.
The contract that sparked the dispute between the Romanian state and Pfizer was signed in May 2021, during the mandate of Prime Minister Florin Cîțu, while the Ministry of Health was led by Ioana Mihăilă. Through this contract, Romania assumed the purchase of an additional 39 million doses of vaccine, an aberrant volume in relation to national needs. Of the total of 39 million doses that the Romanian state undertook to purchase under the contract signed in May 2021, around 29 million doses have neither been ordered nor paid for, and this refusal was the subject of the dispute Romania lost in the first instance in Brussels.
As early as 2022, FACIAS notified the National Anti-Corruption Directorate about the unjustified quantities of vaccines purchased by the Romanian state, demanding that those who engaged our country by signing these contracts be held accountable.
FACIAS has consistently called on the Ministry of Health to renegotiate contracts, warning that placing new orders risks turning stocks into losses, given the low vaccination rate and the risk of millions of doses expiring.
In a reply sent to FACIAS in 2024, the Ministry of Health confirmed that Romania had ordered and received 36.833.730 doses of anti-COVID vaccine under contracts worth more than 1 billion euro for which it had already paid approx. 500 million euro, leaving it with a payment obligation of approx. 600 million euro. It should also be noted that, of these doses, 14,164,564 doses, i.e. more than a third of the total purchased, have expired in warehouses, and the Romanian state has also borne the costs of their destruction.
The cost of the incompetence of governments should not be paid out of citizens' pockets. To this end, FACIAS will ask the authorities to establish the financial liability of all those who approved and implemented the decisions by which Romania was committed to this payment and of those who did not take the necessary measures to prevent the payment of more than 600 million euros.
FACIAS will also request the full publication of the documents underlying the assumption of the quantities, the order documents, the relevant institutional correspondence and the measures taken or omitted to limit the damage. The citizens have the right to know who decided Romania's entry into this contract, who placed the order for the 39,099,623 doses and who left the Romanian state exposed to a loss of over 600 million euro.