The European Commission is seeking feedback on commitments offered by Sanofi after raising concerns that the drugmaker may have run a misleading campaign that disparaged a rival flu vaccine recommended for vulnerable patients in Germany and France.
Sanofi, headquartered in France, sells an enhanced flu vaccine for people over 60 under the brand name Efluelda in the EU, where it competes with CSL Seqirus’s Fluad, the Commission said in a statement on Wednesday.
It opened a formal investigation on 26 June 2026 and issued a preliminary assessment setting out its initial concerns.
It found Sanofi may be dominant in the market for enhanced flu vaccines in Germany and France, and indicated that since 2024 the company may have targeted health-care professionals with communications that suggested Fluad had weaker evidence than Efluelda, misrepresented national vaccination recommendations, and implied that Germany’s recommendation for Fluad faced unresolved scientific objections.
The EU executive said that conduct could restrict competition in breach of Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which bars abuse of a dominant market position.
What Sanofi has offered
To address the Commission’s preliminary concerns, Sanofi has offered to publish a statement on its German website for two years acknowledging assessments by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and Germany’s national immunisation technical advisory group (NITAG), the Commission said.
The statement would say the German NITAG assessed both Efluelda and Fluad as having a robust evidence base and recommended them equally for older people over standard flu vaccines, and Sanofi would also distribute the statement to German health-care professionals.
Sanofi has also offered to publish a statement on its French website for two years stating that France’s NITAG treats Fluad and Efluelda as equivalent.
In addition, it would include a prominent citation of the current German NITAG recommendation in German marketing and promotional material for enhanced flu vaccines for four years.
The company has further offered to refrain, in communications with health-care professionals in Germany and France, from criticising or contradicting applicable national vaccine recommendations, portraying Fluad negatively, or suggesting Efluelda is safer or more effective unless supported by approved product information or certain comparative studies.
The commitments would run until March 2030 and would be monitored by an independent trustee reporting regularly to the Commission.
Interested parties have until 21 August 2026 to submit views on the proposed commitments, and the full text is available on the Commission’s competition cases website.
