Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-07-11-Speech-3-381"
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"en.20070711.32.3-381"2
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"Madam President, the Commission shares Parliament’s view that access to medicines for poor developing countries is a matter of huge political and humanitarian importance, and the Commission has taken a number of initiatives to facilitate access to medicines for poor developing countries through existing programmes.
Third, the Commission encourages pharmaceutical companies to adopt schemes, such as tiered pricing, under which medicines are sold in poor and developing countries at considerably lower prices than in developed countries.
Fourth, the Commission supports local production capacity. Local production can promote competition and make pharmaceutical products more affordable. It is also important to encourage technology transfer to ensure that locally produced pharmaceutical products can meet internationally agreed standards.
To conclude, I hope that Parliament has been reassured that access to medicines remains a priority for the Commission. Now that the European Parliament has all the elements in its hands to make a well-informed decision, and given the role played by the European Community in forging this permanent solution, it would be regrettable if the European Community could not accept it in time. It is essential that Parliament and the Commission continue to cooperate closely to facilitate access to medicines for poor developing countries.
From the outset, the European Community has been at the forefront of the debate on TRIPS and access to medicines. In the WTO, we played an active role in bringing together almost irreconcilable positions. Developing countries were grateful to the European Union for our role as an honest broker.
The debate in the WTO first led to the adoption of the declaration in Doha in November 2001. This declaration reaffirms the right of WTO members to use, to the full, the flexibilities contained in the TRIPS Agreement, including the use of compulsory licensing. For those countries with no manufacturing capacity in the pharmaceutical sector and that could not make effective use of compulsory licensing under the TRIPS Agreement, a temporary waiver from the normal rules of patent law was adopted in August 2003.
Parliament, together with the Council, implemented this waiver decision by adopting it at first reading – Regulation (EC) No 816/2006 – to allow manufacturers of generic drugs to produce patent medicines for export to countries in need without sufficient capacity to produce them.
The protocol amending the TRIPS Agreement aims at transforming this decision into a permanent and legally secure solution. This flexibility, to be introduced into the TRIPS Agreement, can help save lives without undermining the patent system, which is one of the main incentives for the research and development of new medicines.
We are now at the very end of this WTO process. The last step is the acceptance of the TRIPS amendment.
I come now to the specific questions raised in the oral question, and I have discussed these responses with my colleague, Mr Mandelson, who is in charge of trade policy in the Commission.
I should like to make four specific, concise points. First, the mechanism created by the WTO decision of August 2003 and the Protocol to the TRIPS Agreement is the result of long and difficult negotiations between almost 150 countries. It represents a balance which was difficult to strike. This mechanism must be seen only as a part of the wider issue of access to affordable medicines for developing countries, which goes far beyond the issue of patent law.
Second, the Commission can confirm that the European Community is committed not to include, in the economic partnership agreements and in other future bilateral and regional agreements with poor developing countries, any TRIPS+ provisions which could affect access to medicines or undermine the TRIPS flexibility contained in the Doha Declaration on TRIPS and public health."@en1
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