The European Commission’s Executive Vice-President for Trade, Valdis Dombrovskis, made several recommendations for a fairer distribution of Covid-19 vaccines around the world at a World Trade Organization (WTO) webinar on vaccine fairness on 14 April.
“We are all aware that global vaccine production is concentrated in a few countries. There are regions in which manufacturing capacity is not sufficient”, he said. He then made suggestions for increasing this production capacity worldwide. “Given the technical complexity of manufacturing Covid-19 vaccine, governments should facilitate broad industry cooperation, based on transfers of technology and know-how”, Dombrovskis said.
While there is a debate about lifting patents on Covid-19 vaccines, supported by some WTO members, Dombrovskis pointed to the tools already available to relax intellectual property rights.
“Should voluntary solutions fail, the TRIPS Agreement already provides a framework for sharing technology through the granting of compulsory licences”, he added. This is the ability of a government to provide permission to a company to produce a vaccine without holding the patent.
Executive Vice-President called on the WTO to support the equitable distribution of vaccines by promoting good trade facilitation practices, fostering cooperation with the private sector, supporting the use of compulsory licensing by its Members, and monitoring export restrictions. (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)