A diplomatic row has broken out after the EU’s top official claimed the UK had imposed an “outright ban” on the export of Covid vaccines.
European Council President Charles Michel said it applied to all vaccines and components produced in the UK.
But Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has described the suggestion as “completely false”, the BBC understands.
An EU official has been summoned to the Foreign Office for “further discussions” on the matter.
The argument comes with European leaders under pressure over the slow rollout of Covid-19 vaccines.
In the UK, meanwhile, 22.5 million people – a third of the adult population – have received their first dose.
“Here again, the facts do not lie,” he wrote. “The United Kingdom and the United States have imposed an outright ban on the export of vaccines or vaccine components produced on their territory.
“But the European Union, the region with the largest vaccine production capacity in the world, has simply put in place a system for controlling the export of doses produced in the EU.”
In response, Mr. Raab has written to Mr Michel to “set the record straight”, saying the “false claim has been repeated at various levels within the EU and the Commission”.
His letter is understood to say: “The UK government has not blocked the export of a single Covid-19 vaccine or vaccine components.”
But, after news of the row broke, Mr Michel tweeted that there were “different ways of imposing bans or restrictions on vaccines/medicines”.
The EU has faced production problems with the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines.
In January, it introduced a system of controls on exports, requiring manufacturers to seek permission from national governments for planned sales.
The EU also drafted regulations which would have overridden the Northern Ireland Protocol- agreed with the UK last year – potentially allowing it to stop vaccines bound for Northern Ireland.
But it backed down following widespread criticism.
Earlier this month, Italy blocked a shipment of 250,000 doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine to Australia.
The UK, which is expected to have a large surplus of vaccines after ordering 400 million doses, has said it will donate most of those left over to poorer countries.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron has urged richer countries to put aside up to 5% of their current supplies for this purpose.