European Commission | Press Release | March 5, 2002
Brussels - The EU on Tuesday tabled proposals in Geneva on ensuring access to medicines in developing countries with no domestic drug production. At a meeting of the WTO Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property rights (TRIPS) Council, the EU put forward options to address a key issue that remained unresolved with the landmark Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Ministerial last November in Doha. Now negotiators under the auspices of the WTO need to work out how to make sure that countries which cannot themselves produce essential drugs may still fully benefit from the TRIPS Agreement. The EU believes the issue can be solved this year. Commenting on the text, EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy said: "What we achieved in Doha was very significant but we left one key issue unresolved. Tuesday's proposals put forward possible solutions to the problems faced by countries that have no domestic drug production of their own, in making use of the emergency provisions in WTO. This is the missing piece in the jigsaw and the sooner we include it the better."
WTO members must in certain circumstances be able to invoke compulsory licences to manufacture essential medicines. If they do not have the capacity to manufacture them, they should have ways of achieving their end -- making available affordable medicines -- by other means.
Given that current WTO legislation does not cater for this, the EU has today put forward two options for solutions to the problem:
- an amendment to the relevant Article of the TRIPS agreement (31f) so that the medicines can be produced elsewhere and exported to the country in need
- that Article 30 of the TRIPS agreement be interpreted in such a way as to allow medicines to be produced elsewhere for export to the country in need.
These options do not exclude other approaches, and the EU is open to discussing all approaches in the interests of finding the expeditious solution called for in the Doha Declaration on this issue.
Negotiators have to report to the WTO General Council on this before the end of 2002.European Commission:
