[Ip-health] Reuters on EU at TRIPS Council

[Mike Palmedo]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=594&u=/nm/20020305/hl_nm/trade_1

EU Proposes Easing WTO Rules to Get Drugs to Poor 
Tue Mar 5, 1:43 PM ET 
By Robert Evans 

GENEVA (Reuters) - The European Union on Tuesday proposed easing World
Trade Organisation (WTO) patent protection rules to allow poor countries
battling health crises like 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. 

It 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 people had access to medicines at a cost they could
afford. 

But the agreement did not address the problem of countries that did not
have the capacity to manufacture the 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
licence in another country. 

STRICT CONTROLS 

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 that the
1994 TRIPS accord would be interpreted to allow for 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 weeklong session--needed to look at three
areas. 

These were: 

--"the need to provide safeguards against exports to countries which do
not face serious public health problems;" 

--"the need to provide safeguards against re-exportation from the
country of destination, especially to rich countries, to avoid creating
'black markets' for the products concerned;" 

--"the need to make the system transparent, in order to allow other
(WTO) members to be informed if a member makes use of this mechanism."