It is the time of pragmatism among EU leaders after willingness to discuss the US proposal to remove patent protections on Covid vaccines to meet global immunization needs. The topic was discussed during the dinner at the end of the Social Summit in Porto, but already the day after the statements by the French president Emmanuel Macron, of the Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, Spanish Pedro Sánchez and Portuguese Antonio Costa, the alignment with the positions expressed by Germany emerged: the problem of vaccines is not patents but production capacity, know-how and exports. Prime Minister Mario Draghi, on the other hand, called for the US proposal to be carefully considered, given the emergency situation, together with the increase in production and the removal of export blocks.
“We need vaccines now”
The president of the EU Commission Ursula von der Leyen went straight to the point, the crux of the export of vaccines, in the press conference before dinner: «I think we should be open to discussion», but «we need vaccines now. The intellectual property waiver will not solve the problem. What is needed is a sharing of vaccines, the export of doses and investments to increase production capacity. Von der Leyen brings up Biden’s US without naming them (but also the United Kingdom), inviting “all those who engage in the debate on the temporary derogation of patents to join us, to commit to exporting a large part of what they produce”. And the president rattles off the EU numbers: «About 50% of what is produced in Europe is exported to 90 countries, including Covax. About 200 million doses were exported and about 200 million distributed to Europeans“. A certain irritation emerged in Brussels: “The next move on vaccine patents is up to the US – explain EU sources -, to give substance to what so far are only declarations of principle, there is no negotiation on a three-line statement”.
May 7, 2021 (change May 7, 2021 | 23:00)
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