Commission ‘pressured’ by drugs giants

Date: 27/06/02

By David Cronin

ANTI-poverty campaigners have accused the European Commission of bowing to pressure from the drugs industry by including its arguments in a new proposal on how life-saving medicines can be made affordable for the world's poorest countries.

Ministers participating in last year's World Trade Organisation (WTO) Doha conference committed themselves to finding 'an expeditious solution' to the problems encountered by developing nations, with little or no facilities for manufacturing drugs, in buying medicines from abroad. Many poor states have complained that treatments for major killers such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria have been made prohibitively expensive by multinational drug companies eager to protect their patents.

EU trade officials have now prepared a paper suggesting there should be an amendment to a provision in the international TRIPS (trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights) agreement. Its current text, which was signed in 1994, limits the possibility to export drugs under a compulsory licence because patent rules are generally restricted to a particular territory.

The Commission is now suggesting that this should be altered in a way that would 'carve out a clearly circumscribed exception' to the export restriction. The paper, which is being considered by the TRIPS Council in the WTO's Geneva headquarters this week, suggests that compulsory licences could be invoked. These could enable the use of a patent on a particular drug made in one country 'needed to address public health problems' in another.

Aid groups such as Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and Oxfam argue in favour of using another clause in the TRIPS accord to export pharmaceuticals to countries where they are sorely needed. Article 30 of the agreement allows WTO members to provide 'limited exceptions to the exclusive rights conferred by a patent' in urgent cases. Oxfam claims the main problem with Commission's new plan is that both importing and exporting states would have to issue a compulsory license. It predicts that the licence 'could get bogged down in legal challenges from the big companies'.

'The fact that the Commission is even considering an amendment of this sort to TRIPS is a big step forward but in the ruthless and Byzantine world of trade rules and disputes, their option has little chance of guaranteeing poor people access to the vital new medicines they need,' said spokeswoman Celine Charveriat.

MSF campaigner Ellen't Hoen said the Commission paper advocates similar positions to those of drugs multinationals and the US government: 'We fear the Commission is throwing in the towel at this very early stage.'

But Commission trade spokesman Anthony Gooch said the paper strikes the right balance between striving for the cheaper availability of treatments and recognising the role the pharmaceutical industry has played in developing vital products. 'With this sort of situation, it is probably difficult to be all things to all men,' he added.

Christophe de Callatay, from the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations, described the Commission proposals as 'the best solution'. 'Compulsory licensing should only be used in exceptional circumstances,' he said. 'This should avoid abuses.'

Anti-poverty campaigners have accused the European Commission of bowing to pressure from the drugs industry by including its arguments in a new proposal on how life-saving medicines can be made affordable for the world's poorest countries.