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 3 - No minutes, no transparency

Perhaps the most obvious Council body to discuss global south proposals to relax WTO patent rules would be the Trade Policy Committee (TPC), where member state representatives meet with the Commission to agree on trade policy issues that are not brought up for debate at ministerial level. This Council body has been heavily criticised in the past for offering privileged access to big business via regular, informal meetings.

The TPC has met more than 40 times in the past year, and while we could not find any sign that the India/ South Africa proposal had been explicitly discussed, many of its meeting agendas have a standing agenda item along the lines of “WTO reform and negotiations”. Could this be where the discussions are held?

It has been impossible to find out.

The agendas are sparse and summaries of the discussion are only rarely produced. These occasional summaries fail to reflect the detail of the discussions that took place, nor do they report the positions taken by different member states. This is contrary to the recommendation of the European Ombudsman and makes it next to impossible for interested journalists, civil society, and citizens to follow the issue.

Of course, pharma industry lobbyists with their greater lobby firepower and networks may well be better placed to be able to track these secret discussions in the Council’s working party labyrinth.

Source, links, further info:

https://corporateeurope.org/en/2021/03/patently-absurd

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