The EU, South Africa, the US and India have reached an agreement on the difficult issue of waiving intellectual property rights on Covid-19 vaccines. These four members had been negotiating on the issue for several weeks, on the advice of WTO Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, to try to break the deadlock in the negotiations. The text they agreed on still has to be submitted to all members of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
According to the text of the agreement, which EUROPE has seen, they have agreed to waive patents on those “developing countries which have not exported more than 10% of the Covid-19 vaccine doses in 2021”. This was part of the US red line, which wanted to avoid at all costs that China could benefit from such flexibility, according to a source.
In detail, the text foresees that these “eligible” countries can provide their companies with compulsory licences, i.e. authorisations to produce the vaccines without having the intellectual property rights. The EU had submitted a proposal to the WTO in June 2021, which already consisted of facilitating the use of these compulsory licences, but which did not convince those who supported a complete waiver of the patents.
This is why the agreement reached further facilitates the use of compulsory licences. Eligible countries will be able to provide authorisations more easily, from an administrative point of view. They will, for example, be able to do so by any legal act at their disposal and without having a compulsory licensing regime in place. Some countries have not implemented the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) into their law.
In addition, the export ban on vaccines produced with this authorisation is lifted so that producers can export the vaccines to other developing countries.
The text also specifies that the remuneration of the patent holder in the context of compulsory licences must “take account of the humanitarian and not for profit dimensions of vaccines supply”.
This waiver applies only to vaccines and not to other medical products. However, the agreement includes a commitment to consider an extension to therapeutic and diagnostic products within six months of the entry into force of the text. As for the duration of this waiver, the four members have set two options: three or five years.
Ms Okonjo-Iweala welcomed the agreement, but said that not all details of the compromise had been worked out and that discussions were still ongoing. Political confirmation from the four members is expected tomorrow, according to a member of the cabinet of the French Trade Minister, Franck Riester.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala also recalled that the remaining WTO members still need to be brought on board. Last week, some countries complained about the lack of transparency in the ongoing quadrilateral negotiations.
On the EU side, Member States are already being consulted on the compromise text.
The compromise was also welcomed by Anna Cavazzini MEP (Greens/EFA, Germany), who called on WTO members to approve the waiver as soon as possible: “We have already lost enough valuable time fighting Covid-19 worldwide and preventing new variants of the virus”. (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)