MEPs demand more action on drug access for poor countries
The European Parliament, dissatisfied with the current mechanism from the World Trade Organisation (WTO), wishes the EU member states and the Commission to commit themselves more fully to facilitating access to drugs for developing countries.
The European Parliament, dissatisfied with the current mechanism from the World Trade Organisation (WTO), wishes the EU member states and the Commission to commit themselves more fully to facilitating access to drugs for developing countries.
The MEPs could refuse to ratify a key amendment of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which they consider too complex and ineffective, if the EU does not make more effort to help developing countries.
A plea of non-admissibility from Parliament would be a setback for the European Commission: as one of the chief architects of the amendment, it wants to see it ratified quickly.
In a resolution, the MEPs ask the EU to take measures - including financial ones - to promote the transfer of pharmaceutical technology.
The European Parliament is also arguing in favour of facilitating the production of medicines by the developing countries themselves, of increasing EU financial aid for public-private partnerships in pharmaceutical r&d for products that are important to these countries and of supporting grouped purchasing strategies enabling economies of scale.
Negotiated under the WTO, the Trips/Adpic agreement provides for a system of voluntary and compulsory licences regulating the production, marketing and import-export of generics to facilitate access to medicines that are essential but protected by patent.
Due to the difficulties for manufacturing in less developed countries, the Trips council issued a temporary text, known as the agreement of August 30 2003, enabling a country to buy generic medicines from another country which holds a compulsory licence.
The Trips council decided at the beginning of December 2005 to perpetuate the August 30 2003 agreement by integrating it in the form of an amendment into the Trips agreement. This modification will be effective when two thirds of WTO members have ratified it.
The members of the European parliament, with whom the decision of whether to ratify it or not lies, are very doubtful about the relevance of this ratification, which would render definitive the provisional solution of 2003.
The EU parliament says in its resolution that this mechanism "represents just a part of the solution to the problem of access to medicines and public health and that other measures to improve health care and infrastructure are equally indispensable".
The Parliament in particular asks the Council to restrict the Commission's mandate to prevent it from negotiating Trips-plus agreements with developing countries. These provisions consist in passing bilateral agreements with the developing countries that involve restrictive intellectual property arrangements.
The European Commissioner for Enlargement, Olli Rehn, confirmed that "the European Community is committed not to include, in the economic partnership agreements and in other future bilateral and regional agreements with poor developing countries, any TRIPS-plus provisions which could affect access to medicines".
But, in reply to an oral question put forward by six parliamentary groups, he said that the EU was already doing a lot to help these countries. "Given the role played by the European Community in forging this permanent solution, it would be regrettable if the European Community could not accept it in time."
According to Rehn, "the outside world would not understand a delay or refusal from the EU. This would undermine the EU's credibility as a whole in this field and as an international partner in general".