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EU more worried about Parma ham branding than COVID vaccine patents

How did EU governments decide to oppose a global measure that could boost production of COVID vaccines and medicines for the global south? You won’t get the slightest hint from official EU sources. But leaked documents reveal that the Commission and member states see the real problem as a mere PR issue of how to deflect criticism. Given the pandemic, their position seems indefensible.
 
Corporate Europe Observatory
 
Part 2 - Secretive working groups
 
The Council is where the 27 member states have their say on the direction and detail of EU policy is ludicrously secretive on many matters, including those of utmost public interest.

Corporate Europe Observatory checked the available agendas of five specific EU Council working parties Sidenote to try to understand member state positions on global access to COVID vaccines and the wider debate on patents. A few relevant discussions were identified.

At the 16 December 2020 meeting of the Council Working Party on Intellectual Property there was an agenda item on the “Proposal of India and South Africa to the WTO TRIPS Council for a temporary waiver of certain TRIPS obligations”, to be based on information provided by the Commission. However, we were unable to see the detail of that discussion and which, if any member state, argued in support of the proposal from India and South Africa because the Council says it “do[es] not prepare any... minutes/reports/summary outcomes for the meetings of this working party”.

This meeting agenda also referenced a “Workshop ‘IP and pandemics’, 29 October 2020”. Yet this was also out of bounds to us. Apparently this was a virtual conference, organised by the German Presidency of the Council, but the recording of the workshop was “not intended for publication or distribution to the general public.”

In another meeting, the Working Parties on Public Health and on Pharmaceuticals and Medical devices met on 1 September 2020 and the agenda included an item to discuss “Access to Covid-19 vaccines via COVAX and the EU Emergency Support Instrument”, again to be based on information from the Commission. However, a specific freedom of information request seeking more information on this was refused on the grounds that there were no reports made of the meeting.

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