Proposals geared toward overhauling the EU’s obligatory licencing system provide hope for a unified method to drugs manufacturing throughout EU member states.
Nonetheless, they fail to recognise the realities of our interconnected world — and danger being a missed alternative to avoid wasting lives and ship a much-needed sign of solidarity and world cooperation.
The Covid-19 pandemic is way from over, as demonstrated by the excessive ranges of recent infections over the previous weeks.
As respiratory diseases proceed to unfold throughout the EU and past, we discovered not too long ago that international locations within the EU have let over 200 million doses of the vaccine go to waste.
As soon as the lifeline of the continent, these vaccines had grow to be redundant resulting from an abating pandemic or an rising unwillingness to be vaccinated.
Donating the surplus medicines, nonetheless, may have helped to alleviate the stress on international locations’ public well being methods worldwide.
These developments carry to the fore the query of preparedness towards future pandemics.
To extend resilience on this regard, in April final yr the European Fee printed a proposal for a brand new, Union-wide, obligatory licencing system that may make it simpler to provide medicines beneath such a licence if a number of EU international locations are concerned.
Impressed by the pandemic, the fee proposed to alter the obligatory licencing system — a short lived measure whereby a reliable state authority can situation a licence that obliges the holder of a patent to share this with, as an example, a generic medicines producer to beat an absence of provide.
This is able to exchange the present piecemeal method the place each member state has to situation a obligatory licence.
Given each the transnational provide chains of medication manufacturing and the cross-border nature of pandemics, the fee proposal seeks to introduce an EU obligatory licence legitimate in a number of member states.
However this laudable proposal falls quick in a single essential respect: it basically considers the EU an island with out connection to the surface world.
That’s to say, merchandise made beneath an EU obligatory licence are completely destined for the inner market. Aside from a restrictive case wherein least developed international locations with no manufacturing capacities can apply to profit from this licence, exports of such merchandise are prohibited.
Contemplating that the EU and its member states have wasted €4bn on unused vaccines, though these weren’t produced beneath a obligatory licence, it appears essential to incorporate safeguards within the new proposal that permit for the export of such extra capability.
The excellent news is that the treatment to this already exists: the WTO Settlement on Commerce-Associated Facets of Mental Property Rights (also called the TRIPS Settlement) foresees the likelihood {that a} non-predominant a part of merchandise (i.e., as much as 49 %) produced beneath a obligatory licence might be exported.
By together with this internationally agreed precept, the EU wouldn’t solely keep away from losing medicines, it could additionally be certain that within the subsequent pandemic, it could assist international locations in want and, in doing so, assist itself as a result of we all know that pandemics don’t cease at borders.
Together with the potential of exports beneath an EU obligatory license won’t solely save lives, it says to the world: we don’t solely care about our personal — a message that’s of rising significance in an more and more isolationist world context.