ROME (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 10th March, 2021) Authorities in the Italian region of Lombardy had no play in a Swiss-Italian pharma company's decision to make the Russian COVID-19 vaccine at its factory near Milan, a government spokesman said Tuesday.
The Italian-Russian Chamber of Commerce said earlier in the day that Swiss-based Adienne had signed a deal with the Russian Direct Investment Fund to start producing a 10 million Sputnik V doses in July, the first such contract in the European Union.
"The Lombardy region insists that it did not play a role in the aforementioned deal, of which it learned indirectly through the media. This deal... lies in the area of private law," a spokesman for the central government in Rome said.
Lombardia's President Attilio Fontana has praised the agreement as "good news." The EU drugs regulator EMA launched a rolling review of the Russian vaccine last week, which is the first step toward having it authorized for EU-wide use.
