Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-12-12-Speech-3-199"
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".
In response to Mr Alavanos, I would say that the Council is perfectly aware of the importance of the issue that he raised. I would also reiterate that Article 152 – formerly article 129 of the Treaty establishing the European Community – specifies, in general terms, that Community action in the area of health shall supplement national policies. The Community shall encourage cooperation between the Member States in the areas mentioned in the Treaty and, if necessary, shall lend support to their action. In this context, the Community shall also ensure a high level of human health protection by defining and implementing all the policies and actions.
As you know, the Fourth WTO Ministerial Conference, which took place in Doha between 9 to 14 November this year, adopted a Declaration on the TRIPS agreement and public health. In the Declaration, the ministerial conference acknowledged, on the one hand, the gravity of public health problems, particularly afflicting many developing countries and least-developed countries and, on the other hand, that intellectual property protection is also important for the development of new medicines.
In this Declaration, WTO members agreed that the TRIPS agreement does not prevent Members from taking the appropriate measures to protect public health and affirmed that the Agreement can and should be interpreted and implemented in a manner supportive of WTO Members’ right to protect public health, and, in particular, to promote access to medicines for all.
More specifically, the Declaration recognises that the flexibilities in the TRIPS agreement include the right of each Member to grant compulsory licences and to determine what constitutes a national emergency or other circumstances of extreme urgency, it being understood that public health crises, including those relating to HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other epidemics, can represent a national emergency or other circumstances of extreme urgency.
Furthermore, the Declaration reaffirms the commitment of developed-country WTO Members to provide incentives to their enterprises and institutions to promote and encourage technology transfer to least-developed countries.
The Declaration also specifies that the least-developed country Members will not be obliged, with respect to pharmaceutical products, to apply Sections 5 (Trademarks) and 7 (Protection of non-divulged information) of Part II of the TRIPS Agreement or to enforce rights provided for under these Sections until 1 January 2016, without prejudice to the right of the least-developed country Members to seek other extensions of the transition periods.
I would add that, in the Declaration, WTO Member States made a commitment to propose, before July 2002, genuine solutions that could be consolidated in order to resolve the problem of those developing countries and least-developed countries that do not have manufacturing capacities for medicines. There is the problem of possible parallel imports or other measures which must enable these countries to have access to these medicines at a price that is reasonable, and the lowest possible.
This will be done between now and next summer and I assure you that we will have to work like Trojans to achieve this. Time is not on our side. The problem is extremely complex, but this is a very important commitment, because it relates to an aspect of the problem which could not be dealt with by the agreement."@en1
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