EU Proposes Easing WTO Rules to Improve Access to Drugs
Originally published by Reuters Health, March 5, 2002
GENEVA (Reuters) — The European Union (EU) on Tuesday proposed easing World Trade Organisation (WTO) patent protection rules to allow poor countries battling health crises like HIV/AIDS to get low-cost drugs from abroad.
EU officials said the proposal was aimed at filling a gap in a widely acclaimed agreement on the sensitive issue reached at a WTO ministerial conference last November.
That accord, endorsed by big pharmaceutical firms as well as major powers and developing countries, made clear that poor states could in an emergency order production of patented medicines under a procedure termed compulsory licensing.
The accord also led to a truce in a row between rich and poor countries, and between drug companies and non-governmental organisations, over how to ensure impoverished patients had access to medicines at a cost they could afford. But the agreement did not address the problem of countries that do not have the capacity to manufacture drugs.
The EU plan, tabled at a session of the WTO's Council on Trade-Related Intellectual Property (TRIPS) issues, calls for an amendment to the trade body's rules to allow drugs to be produced under compulsory licensing in another country. The drugs could then be exported, under strict controls to prevent abuse or diversion to other markets, to the country issuing the licence order.
Alternatively, the EU paper suggested, WTO members could agree to interpret the 1994 TRIPS accord as allowing medicines to be produced elsewhere under compulsory licence and exported to the country in need.
A compulsory licence order overrides patents and allows a country invoking it to obtain essential medicines at production-cost price or very near by paying little or no royalties to the patent holder.
EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy said the proposals would help provide "the missing piece in the jigsaw" of the TRIPS agreement reached at the WTO conference in the Qatari capital Doha last November. "The sooner we include it, the better," he said in a statement.
But in the text of the proposal, the EU said the TRIPS Council--unlikely to reach a decision during its week-long session—needed to look at safeguard and transparency issues.
