U.S. President Joe Biden has expressed support for a proposal to exempt intellectual property rights for the New Crown vaccine, causing controversy in various countries. French President Emmanuel Macron expressed his approval Thursday, but Europe’s Switzerland and Germany voiced their opposition. Pharmaceutical groups as a whole expressed dissatisfaction. Reuters said the WTO negotiations around the exemption of intellectual property rights for the new crown vaccine could take months.
AFP reported that Switzerland, which has a large pharmaceutical industry, said Thursday that exempting the intellectual property rights of the new crown vaccine would not help the rapid and fair distribution of vaccines to fight the new crown outbreak. A statement issued Thursday by the Swiss Federal Secretariat for Economic Affairs noted that the U.S. announcement to waive the intellectual property rights for the New Crown vaccine is a significant decision, but there are still many significant unanswered questions about the specific course of action. Switzerland will evaluate this U.S. decision.
Switzerland stressed that it has just reissued 300 million Swiss francs in aid to the Global Access Facility for New Crown vaccine to support the project.
Also Germany has expressed its opposition to the U.S. proposal to drop patent protection for the New Crown vaccine. A German government spokesman said Thursday that it is production capacity and high quality standards that limit vaccine production, not patents, and that intellectual property protection is a source of innovation and must be so in the future.
The German government spokesman also said that Germany supports the new crown vaccine global access mechanism, expecting more people to have access to vaccines, and that discussions are continuing within the World Trade Organization.
According to experts cited by Reuters, U.S. President Joe Biden supports the proposal to exempt intellectual property rights for the New Crown vaccine, and the next step would require the WTO to finalize an agreement, but the process could take several months.
Trade experts say not only could negotiations be protracted, but there could be a final exemption that is significantly smaller in scope and much shorter in duration than those initially proposed by India and South Africa.
Before Biden announced his support, India and South Africa have confirmed their intention to draft a new proposal at the WTO General Council meeting, prompting the newly appointed WTO Director General Okonjo-Iweala to see a “pragmatic solution”. The consensus was not reached.
The IPR exemptions, initially proposed by India and South Africa last October, cover vaccines, treatment protocols, diagnostic kits, respirators, protective equipment and other disease-prevention-related products.
U.S. Trade Representative David Deitch said Wednesday that she would conduct “text-based consultations” on the WTO waiver agreement; although this is the standard process for negotiating trade agreements, it is dull and tedious. The negotiating parties will come up with their own favored textual solutions and then try to find common ground, sometimes leaving the areas of sharp disagreement blank for later resolution by political figures.
All 164 WTO members must reach consensus on these resolutions, and any one member has the right to veto them, so there will likely be a lot of dissent. Negotiations are likely to take place online and in the floor meetings.
Another section of Republican U.S. lawmakers suggested that the decision would allow U.S. technology to be transferred to China. Republican Senator Mike Crapo (R-UT) said in a statement, “This decision, if it moves forward, will benefit countries like China that actively seek access to U.S. technology to support their leading companies.”
Reuters said that while Biden’s support adds political momentum to a deal, other countries with large pharmaceutical industries, including the United Kingdom, Japan, Switzerland and the European Union, which have the ability to block a deal, are opposed to the waiver.
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