MEPs postpone vote on TRIPS for third time

The European Parliament's international trade committee has decided for the third time to postpone its vote on the modification of a key agreement on developing countries' access to medicines.

Until the European Parliament gives assent to the modification of the agreement on trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS), the text cannot be ratified by the EU. In postponing this vote, the MEPs are making it known that they do not intend to give way regarding the commitments they have requested of the Council, the institution representing the 27 EU member states.

The text will not go into plenary before November, but according to Parliament, members of the European Parliament and the European Commission plan to meet with the Council before then to try to resolve the situation.

The TRIPS agreement from the World Trade Organisation (WTO) provides for a system of voluntary and compulsory licences regulating the production, marketing and import-export of generics to facilitate access to medicines which are essential but are patent protected.

Due to difficulties for manufacturing in the least advanced countries a transitory mechanism was designed in 2003, which would become definitive if two thirds of the WTO members - the European Union included - ratify it. To date, 11 members out of the 151 making up the WTO have done this.

The MEPs consider that this system - enabling countries that do not have the capacity to produce generics of patented products, to obtain drug imports by means of locally granted compulsory licences - provides only a partial solution to the problem. Only Rwanda, to date, has said it wishes to use this system, as an importer.

The MEPs want guarantees that all the measures envisaged by the agreement will be able to be used, and that methods distorting its principles will not be employed.

In a July resolution the European Parliament asked the Council to confirm that member states are free to use the flexibility provided for under the TRIPS agreement. These exceptions enable the production and importation of medicines for public health needs to be authorised.

The MEPs had also asked the Council to restrict the Commission's mandate so that it cannot negotiate "TRIPS-plus" provisions, which are bilateral agreements with developing countries providing for restrictive measures on intellectual property.

Since then, MEPs on the international trade committee have continuously postponed their vote, on each occasion expressing their discontent with the responses given by the Council's Portuguese Presidency, which they consider inadequate.