The European Union will propose to the organism to facilitate the vaccine trade and to put order in the export restrictions in the producing countries.
The EU will act “constructively” at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to assess a patent lift on covid vaccines, but will first propose measures to rapidly increase production, the European Commission announced on Wednesday.
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“Accelerating production and sharing more widely and rapidly manufactured vaccines at an affordable cost is the only effective solution to combat this pandemic everywhere,” said Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis.
The Commission will shortly present to the WTO a “proposal” to “facilitate trade and bring order to export restrictions” in producing countries, Dombrovskis told the European Parliament.
The EU will propose “the expansion of production, obtaining guarantees from laboratories” and “clarify and facilitate the relaxation of the rules governing intellectual property to allow ‘compulsory licenses”, granted by a national authority, framed and accompanied by compensation financial by patent holder.
Regarding a general lifting of intellectual property rights on vaccines – an idea launched by the United States – EU countries have already expressed their skepticism, highlighting the delay in the transfer of industrial know-how.
“The EU is ready to engage constructively to see how much these [patent lifting] proposals would contribute to the goals” of increasing supply, Dombrovskis said.
“We will work together to find pragmatic and effective solutions,” Von der Leyen noted on Twitter after that meeting.
MEPs, meanwhile, expressed conflicting opinions.
“[US President Joe] Biden’s proposal does not provide a timely response, immediately, since patenting is a long and complex process, which involves training engineers, installing assembly lines,” said liberal legislator Dacian Ciolos.
For his part, right-wing legislator Peter Liese pointed out that “compulsory licenses can be a means only if they are carried out through cooperation. If a French chef publishes his recipes on the Internet, he will not turn all Internet users into chefs ”.
His colleague Geoffroy Didier, meanwhile, considered that the American idea was “hypocritical, illusory and counterproductive (…) There is nothing more selfish than to appear generous when you first help yourself.”
On the contrary, the Social Democrats, the Greens and the left-wing groups called on Brussels to support Washington’s initiative in the WTO.
