The President of the European Council, Charles Michel, said on Thursday 6 May that the heads of state and government would discuss the lifting of patents on Covid-19 vaccines at the Social Summit in Porto on 7-8 May.
“The EU supports the ‘third way’ led by World Trade Organization (WTO) Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to provide vaccines to the world”, he said on Twitter. He was referring to the WTO Director General’s position that there is a trade-off between lifting patents and protecting intellectual property (see EUROPE 12706/21).
While the EU was until recently strongly opposed to the idea of lifting intellectual property rights, as proposed by South Africa and India in October (see EUROPE 12704/5), it is now open to discussion. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU was “ready to discuss any proposal that would tackle the crisis in an effective and pragmatic way” during her speech at a conference organised by the European University Institute in Florence on Thursday.
A few hours earlier, US Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced in a statement that the US supported the proposal to lift intellectual property rights on Covid-19 vaccines.
This position has led the EU to change its position somewhat. “We are ready to discuss how the US proposal can achieve this goal”, said the Commission President.
On the same day, it was the turn of French President Emmanuel Macron to express his “full support” for lifting the patents. However, he told the media that he believed that the priority for increasing production was technology transfer.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for her part, is said to be opposed to the American proposal. According to a government spokesperson quoted by Bloomberg, Merkel fears that such a decision would lead to “serious complications” for vaccine production.
Health situation. The health situation is expected to be discussed by the leaders at their working dinner on Friday.
It was already planned that an update would be given during this informal exchange on the health situation, marked in particular by the acceleration of the vaccination campaign.
On Thursday, Ms von der Leyen said that 200 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine had already been administered at this stage. Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said in the afternoon that 30% of Europeans had been vaccinated, 20% with two doses.
“We are vaccinating thirty Europeans every second”, said Ms von der Leyen, still “convinced” that 70% of adults will have been vaccinated by July (see EUROPE 12705/1). (Original version in French by Léa Marchal and Agathe Cherki)