Brussels / Doha, 13/11/2001 (Agence Europe) - Satisfied with the compromise reached the day before over the controversy regarding the protection of public health and pharmaceutical patents, which dominated the first four days of the ministerial meeting in Doha, the 142 members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) launched, Tuesday morning, into a race against the clock that was, a few hours later, to lead to a new negotiating Round or a second reversal around the major topics which had made their session in Seattle fail.
The hour of truth was to sound at midnight but, according to European sources, the announcement of the placing in circulation of an ultimate Harbison package at 23.00 hrs. bode for a prolongation of several hours. And it was optimism that seemed to be winning the day, end-afternoon, although the collective effort was running dangerously up against the elimination of export subsidies, the opening up of textile markets and the prior "green light" to the Cotonou agreements demanded by the ACP, whereas improvements to the working programme on the environment and social aspects, that the Europeans were hoping for, was still making itself waited for. A vast give-and-take began with a few promising movements on different aspects: - on agriculture, with the United States' new willingness to place on the table its own export credits for agricultural products that its partners held for subsidies that dare not speak their name, the placing between brackets of the goal of gradually eliminating such aid for which Europeans hoped for an "improvement" to the formula, the will of the Fifteen to focus on this issue rather than on references to no-commercial concerns that seems to have passed off better and especially their "clear determination to continue", as well as their apparent readiness to accept as such the ideas put forward for investments and competition. "We already have an agenda for development", and that is "to a great extent due to the concessions and mediation of the Europeans", sources in the delegation considered in an ultimate appeal for reciprocity.
Agreement on access to medicines
An agreement of principle was reached Monday evening on access to medicines and intellectual property, one of the most delicate issues of this ministerial on which both the Americans and the Swiss and their main interlocutors, India and Brazil, were intractable at the outset. The former were doggedly defending the protection granted to patents by the Agreement on Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and the incentive this provides to innovate within their pharmaceutical industries, faced with the others who were demanding access to less costly medicines to care for the population of the developing world decimated by illnesses that may be treated these days, such as tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS, and the case of India in particular in defending its generic medicines industry. The text, which safeguards the interests of all sides, will doubtless be integrated in the final package, a procedural sleight of hand that allows to capitalise on this concession given to the developing countries (almost 75% of the members of the WTO) to encourage them to show flexibility on other issues.
And the concession is not a small one: the United States and their allies, which a day earlier were limiting themselves to offering the developing countries, and for one illness only, AIDS, a 15 moratorium for implementing the Agreement, finally agreed to commit themselves politically to nothing in the agreement "being able to prevent the members (of the WTO) to take measures to protect public health", and, "in particular, ensure access to medicines for all". The ministerial declaration at the same time reaffirms the obligation to respect this agreement and its importance for the development of new medicines. It also offers the 49 less advanced countries the possibility of pushing back the agreement until 2016, or ten years. The text does, however, leave in suspense the pressing problem of the countries without means of production which are also the poorest, for which compulsory licences are useless if they cannot have generic medicines manufactured elsewhere. The WTO simply promises to put forward a solution by end-2002. This agreement will doubtless not be reviewed, between now and the end of the Conference, even though its remains dependent on the 142's "green light" to a package of declarations and decisions on the future Negotiating Round. The consensus reached by the working group headed by the Mexican Luis Ernesto Derbez Bautista, in which the United States, the European Union, New Zealand, Canada, Zimbabwe, India, Brazil and Kenya took part, has already been endorsed by Switzerland, which says it can "live with it".