The Diplomat
U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to support the temporary suspension of patents for COVID-19 vaccines “is not enough to guarantee access to developing countries,” according to the Spanish government, which yesterday presented a proposal to the Porto Social Summit to support the release of patents.
“We started in Porto the EU Social Summit 2021, an appointment to continue moving forward united against the pandemic”, said yesterday the President of the Government, Pedro Sanchez, through his Twitter account. “Spain applauds the proposal of the President of the United States to suspend patents”, he continued. “We also propose to accelerate the process of transmission of technology and knowledge to all countries” and the Spanish government presents “a proposal to support the release of patents on the vaccine against COVID-19”, he added.
As Moncloa warned last Thursday in a statement, Biden’s decision to raise “openly the issue of the temporary exemption from the TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) agreement of the WTO for patents linked to COVID-19 vaccines” (…) marks the path already started by India and South Africa in the WTO”, he added. However, he warned, “the exemption alone is not enough to guarantee access to developing countries”.
For this reason, Spain has distributed a proposal in the form of a Non Paper (unofficial diplomatic document) that “addresses these elements” and which Pedro Sánchez took to the European Social Summit in Oporto, which began yesterday and will conclude today with the meeting of EU heads of state and government. The Spanish initiative was presented, specifically, during the working dinner convened by the President of the Council, Charles Michel, in which the leaders addressed the fight against the pandemic, among other issues, and which concluded the first day of the Summit, consisting of a High Level Conference in which Pedro Sánchez intervened in the panel on Labor and Employment.
The Spanish Non Paper, which aims to “maximize global vaccine production capacity, ensure the proper functioning of supply chains, remove trade barriers and logistical hurdles, and ensure sufficient transportation, warehousing and distribution capacities”, warns that “intellectual property cannot be an obstacle to ending COVID-19 and to ensuring equitable and universal access to vaccines ” and, therefore, “consensus should therefore be urgently found on the proposal for a temporary waiver of certain obligations under the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) in response to COVID-19 within the World Trade Organization (WTO)”. “In the meantime, all necessary mechanisms to promote and incentivize voluntary licensing agreements must be activated and operationalized”, it continues.
The proposal also calls for a “joint commitment” to the COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP), created a year ago within the World Health Organization (WHO) to promote the voluntary transfer of intellectual property rights and the sharing of all forms of knowledge related to the virus, to be expressed during the next World Health Assembly, and warns, with a view to “future health emergencies”, of the need to create a working group within the WTO, in collaboration with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the WHO, to propose the adaptation of global rules on intellectual property rights “to the needs of fighting global pandemics”.
The Spanish proposal also calls for all countries to commit to “ease or remove all obstacles to trade, including import duties and export bans, along the manufacturing value chain covering both vaccines and the components necessary to produce them”. Finally, the Spanish Non Paper calls for measures to accelerate the distribution of vaccines, such as the establishment of “a public-private alliance between airlines, states, international organizations such as WHO / PAHO and UNICEF, and other relevant stakeholders such as GAVI to promote the distribution of vaccines and supplies”.
