The Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD) has today sent a letter to EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and U.S. President Joe Biden urging for the achievement and speedy adoption of the “Waiver from Certain Provisions of the TRIPS Agreement for the Prevention, Containment and Treatment of COVID-19” submitted by India and South Africa and supported by more than 100 nations at the World Trade Organization (WTO).
The United States has made clear that it will engage in text-based negotiations, and we appreciate the statement from U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai that the extraordinary threat of the pandemic and need to save lives require extraordinary action. EU statements leave room for ambiguity with respect to whether the EU will engage in textual negotiations at the WTO.
TACD members call on the European Union and the U.S. to avoid repeating the tragedy of the HIV/AIDS crisis. In the late 1990s, millions of people in developing countries were dying from AIDS because pharmaceutical firms refused to provide affordable access to the medicines that made AIDS a treatable chronic disease for those who could afford lifesaving drugs.
TACD believes the temporary, emergency COVID-19 waiver, proposed by India and South Africa and now co-sponsored by 63 countries, is a positive measure to expand the availability of vaccines, tests, and treatments. Such a waiver makes all the more sense given that governments worldwide, particularly the United States and the European Union, provided billions in upfront payments to the pharmaceutical industry to support development and production of COVID-19 health technologies.
Supporting this waiver is the right thing to do in and of itself. It should go hand in hand with the transfer of know-how, for example through the WHO COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP), support for the proposed World Health Organisation vaccine manufacturing technology transfer hub and measures to make manufacturing know-how a truly global public good. In addition, it is important to lift export restrictions targeting vaccines. Ending the COVID-19 pandemic as quickly as possible worldwide is necessary to protect the health of U.S. and European residents and reboot the global economy on which so much of the U.S. and EU economies rely.
Leading consumer organisations on both sides of the Atlantic are calling on the European Union and the U.S. to take a leadership role in ensuring the speediest adoption of the temporary, emergency COVID-19 WTO waiver of certain TRIPS provisions to create the legal certainty governments and manufacturers around the world need to scale up production of vaccines, treatments, and diagnostics.
Background reading:
- TACD resolution: “Intellectual Property Aspects of Pandemics”
- TACD resolution: “Access to Medicines in Developing Countries”
- TACD briefing paper: “Producing HIV/AIDS medicines for export/import under TRIPS, articles 31(f), (k), and 30”