Brussels, 08/11/2010 (Agence Europe) - On the eve of a further session of negotiations for a free-trade agreement between the EU and India, to be held in Brussels from 8 to 12 November, Oxfam has accused the European Commission of putting pressure on the Indian government to agree, as part of the future bilateral pact which may be signed on the sidelines of the EU-India summit in Brussels in December, new rules which, the NGO claims, will have a devastating impact on the flow of generic drugs to developing countries.
According to Oxfam, the European negotiators are bringing pressure to bear on their Indian counterparts to include in the agreement enforcement measures at borders, together with criminal sanctions, which would be applied in the event of disagreements over the protection of intellectual property for a drug. “These measures have generated major international controversy”, further to seizures of Indian generics by the customs authorities of several member states of the EU, which led to consultations between Brussels and New Delhi as part of a complaint brought by India to the WTO (EUROPE 10241). Oxfam also levels charges at the European executive of having “aggressively” pushed for data exclusivity, which would block the registration and marketing approval of generic drugs for five years or more, even when there is no patent on a medicine. “When data exclusivity is implemented, drug regulatory authorities in developing countries are prevented from using clinical trial data conducted by multinational drug companies to approve the marketing of a generic equivalent medicine. This means that the approval of generic medicines is delayed. Global trade rules do not require this, but the European Union is pushing for inclusion of this rule in its free-trade deal with India”, the NGO complains. As early as late April this year, the NGO Médecins sans frontières intervened to call for provisions blocking access to drugs to be withdrawn from the future agreement (EUROPE 10126). In early October, several NGOs also called for a halt to negotiations with India (EUROPE 10229). (E.H./transl.fl)