EU Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis told MEPs on Wednesday 19 May that the Commission plans to present a proposal to the World Trade Organization (WTO) on the production of Covid-19 vaccines. This will focus on three levers to increase the production and distribution of inputs and vaccines.
Firstly, the Commission considers that trade facilitation and the removal of all export restrictions are essential to ensure a more equal distribution of vaccines worldwide. “No measures should be taken that limit trade in inputs for vaccine production”, the Commissioner told the plenary.
The second point concerns the support that governments can provide to manufacturers, and vice versa. Investment, technology transfer and the sale of vaccines at cost to low-income countries are essential, says the European Commission.
Finally, on intellectual property, the institution recommends the use of compulsory licensing under the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement. These allow governments to grant a company permission to produce a vaccine without holding the patent. “It is therefore important for each WTO Member to ensure that its legal framework on compulsory licensing is effective, and for the international community to facilitate such actions”, added Valdis Dombrovskis.
Division in the European Parliament
The MEPs who participated in the debate with the Commissioner are divided into two camps. There are those who believe that patents on vaccines should be lifted immediately at all costs, and those who are not completely opposed to the idea, but believe that the priority lies elsewhere, or that lifting them will not bring any short-term improvement.
The EPP spoke with one voice to point out that the US and the UK were not exporting their doses, while the EU was. “Barriers to exports of inputs must be removed, donations of doses increased, production increased and technological knowledge transferred”, said Esther de Lange (EPP, Netherlands). For her group, there is no evidence of the effectiveness of waiving intellectual property rights. The ECR also shares this opinion.
For The Left, the Greens/EFA and S&D, on the other hand, it is a question of restoring the status of the vaccine as a common public good. “We call on the European Commission to support the temporary suspension of patents within the WTO to ensure the global distribution of vaccines. We recognise the role of intellectual property in history, but the extraordinary circumstances of a pandemic require extraordinary solutions”, said MEP Iratxe García Pérez (S&D, Spain).
A resolution linked to this debate and calling for the lifting of intellectual property rights is expected to be put to the vote at the June plenary session.
Meanwhile, the major pharmaceutical industry associations called for a more equitable sharing of vaccine doses in a statement on 19 May: “Manufacturers, governments and NGOs must work together to take urgent action to do more about this inequality”, they said.
In addition, the chairman of the European Parliament’s Committee on International Trade, Bernd Lange (S&D, Germany), has written to the European Commission asking it to include a clause on technology transfer in its future vaccine procurement contracts. (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)