Brussels, 29/07/2004 (Agence Europe) - In a letter sent to Pascal Lamy on 9 July, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown and his colleagues for development and trade, Hilary Benn and Patricia Hewitt, expressed their concern about the time it has taken for the EU to implement the WTO decision of August 2003 authorising derogation to the intellectual property rules, in order to facilitate access by developing countries to generic medicines for several serious diseases. The long time taken is put down to the fact that the EU does not have sufficient personnel to translate the decision into the 20 official languages. (The Guardian stated on 28 July that, because of a "bureaucratic shortfall", children are dying of AIDs, malaria and tuberculosis). In a letter of 28 July to the three British ministers, the Trade Commissioner admits there are problems of translation further to enlargement but stresses that "this is not the case here" and considers as "emotional" and "sterile" the comments made by the British press.
In his letter, Mr Lamy said that a draft regulation will be presented to the Council as soon as possible, "because we are aware of the need to act quickly and effectively", and that, although the draft is being drawn up, the developing countries wanting to use the mechanism allowing them to import essential medicines would not be exposed to intellectual property laws. Obviously, he acknowledged, we need a regulation "to reach a long-term solution (...), but we are determined to present something legally watertight, which explains why it took us considerably longer than I had hoped". The regulation, he said, should reflect the WTO's decision "and in particular should not impose any limits on the range of diseases, or extra conditions for the issuing of temporary licences other than the conditions set by the WTO decision".