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The French president wanted to turn the tables on the Biden administration after him call for waiver of vaccine patents, denouncing “Anglo-Saxon” countries for interfering with their owners to save their lives for the rest of the world.
Emmanuel Macron said discussion of intellectual property It was the party that sparked the US compared to the existing obstacles export of vaccines and ingredients, and the need for voluntary schemes to share doses with poor countries.
At an EU summit in the Portuguese city of Porto, he specifically called on the US to warn that the country was storing home vaccine doses for home use.
“Today, Anglo-Saxons block many of these ingredients and vaccines,” Macron said. “What is the real problem now? It’s not really intellectual property. You can give intellectual property to laboratories that don’t know how to produce. “
Speaking in Porton, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said she was ready to start a discussion on IP exemptions, but added that other vaccine-producing regions should follow the EU and export a large part of their production.
The comments came two days later President Joe Biden’s chief commercial adviser to Katherine Tai, said the US will refuse to protect the intellectual property of Covid-19 vaccines. Such a move will allow pharmaceutical manufacturers to make “copier” vaccines without fear of being prosecuted for violating their intellectual property rights.
The Biden administration’s proposal misled the EU and caused a frozen response including major Member States Germany, The pharmaceutical company BioNTech, which together with Pfizer makes one of the main vaccines of Covid-19.
Macron said he was ready to discuss intellectual property issues, but it was not a critical issue to be addressed, as the EU defended the record on vaccine production and exports.
The EU argued that other restrictions, such as export bans and limited raw material availability, were having a more decisive impact on the ability to increase world vaccine production than patent protections.
“They haven’t given us a single example of where [production] the capacity has been reduced for the protection of patents or other IP rights, ”a committee official said.
Von der Leyen said that despite being “open” to the debate over the patent waiver, the move would not advance an additional dose of vaccine in the short to medium term. Those in the debate over refusing IP, like the EU, should be willing to export “a large portion of what is produced in that region,” he said, in a clear challenge to the U.S..
The EU has so far exported about 200m doses of vaccine, similar to the number given to its citizens, von der Leyen said. In contrast, few shots of vaccines have come out of the US.
EU officials said Washington had warned the EU in advance of the patent shortly before it was made public on Wednesday, but that there was no consultation or attempt to coordinate positions. “If you ask me what should happen next, the first thing is that they explain exactly what they mean by the US announcement – we haven’t seen just a very general statement,” one official said.
Brussels is now trying to decide how to respond and European leaders are due to discuss a high-level dinner to be held in Porto on Friday evening.
“Refuse or not, the problem goes far beyond that,” a commission official said earlier on Friday, referring to issues that mention the need to keep supply chains open – mRNA vaccines include 280 components from 19 countries.
According to the official, another issue was that access to patents was not the acquisition of knowledge for vaccination. Approximately 80 to 100 patents were involved in the creation of the mRNA vaccine, the official said, and access to all of them “does not provide an overview of how to give the vaccine, knowledge and technology for it.”
Brussels says international agreements on intellectual property already offer some flexibility to share the IP of the vaccine, including the possibility of issuing a compulsory license.
The EU in recent months has pushed India and South Africa into the World Trade Organization waiver of vaccine patents. Brussels is worried that it will face international pressure to change its position in the WTO talks, which are scheduled to take place in early June, although there is now a chance to hold a meeting this month, according to trade officials.
A senior Biden administration official said there is now an opportunity for the WTO to come together to provide solutions that will help save lives. “We will continue to step up our efforts – working with the private sector and all possible partners – to expand the manufacture and distribution of vaccines worldwide and increase the raw materials needed to produce these vaccines.”
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