EU calls for 'concrete' US vaccine waiver plan

European Union and EU member state leaders meeting for a social policy summit in Portugal called on the US to present a clear plan for President Joe Biden's proposal of waiving patents for COVID-19 vaccines as a way to boost global inoculations.

European Council President Charles Michel, who represents the bloc's 27 national leaders, said, "We are ready to engage on this topic as soon as a concrete proposal would be put on the table." Still, like other EU leaders, he voiced skepticism over the efficacy of such a waiver, saying it was not a "magic bullet."

Instead, he articulated what opponents to Biden's suggestion have been saying, namely, that patent waivers are not the way to increase vaccinations but rather increased production and distribution. "In Europe we made the decision to make exports possible and we encourage all partners to facilitate the export of doses."

Michel's words echoed those of French President Emmanuel Macron, who said: "It misses the point to say that [a patent waiver] is the emergency. The emergency is to produce more and increase solidarity now."

Reporting from the summit in Portugal, DW's Barbara Wesel said: "The EU's answer is 'we are ready to do everything — we are ready to help, we are ready to transfer knowledge and high-tech materials in order to get production going in those countries but we are not really ready to throw out the patents which might then be just snatched up by China.'" Wesel also noted that there was "some anger underneath the diplomatic formulations that you hear" at the summit.

Critics in the EU have changed their tune

When Biden first brought up the idea of vaccine patent waivers on Wednesday — something that India and South Africa proposed to the World Trade Organization (WTO) last October — EU leaders seem to have been caught off guard, with only Germany openly rejecting the proposal.

DW's Delhi bureau chief Amrita Cheema called Biden's support for patent waivers "a big moral victory for the two countries in a matter of principle," citing the fact that India is the world's biggest producer of generic drugs.

Since then, however, there has been a shift in attitudes. That has become increasingly clear as European politicians have further discussed the issue in Portugal.

Although Greece and Italy have signaled support, most others have pointed instead to what they say is the real problem: distribution. Portugal, Estonia, Belgium and Ireland are among those countries that have now joined the waiver-skeptic bloc. 

Now, Europeans have moved from the fear of looking like the bad guys for blocking patent waivers to calling out the US and UK for failing to export any of the vaccines they produce.

Macron, for instance, railed against the US and UK for policies that call for inoculating all of their own citizens before sharing vaccines with others, "you must open up,'' he said. "In the United States, in the United Kingdom, 100% of what has been produced has been used in the domestic market. First of all, the Anglo-Saxons must stop their bans on exports."

Europe: 'Pharmacy of the world' says von der Leyen

The European Union on the other hand, has exported nearly half of the roughly 400 million doses it has produced to some 90 countries around the world. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who said: "an IP [intellectual property] waiver will not solve the problems, will not bring a single dose of the vaccine in the short- and medium-term," later called the EU, "the pharmacy of the world" for its generous export policy.

On Saturday, von der Leyen also announced that leaders had signed off on a contract with Pfizer-BioNTech for up to 1.8 billion new doses of the vaccine.   

Though EU officials briefing journalists on the issue said the hoarding of crucial ingredients needed for vaccines was a larger obstacle than the question of intellectual property, one far-off voice advocating for patent waivers, Pope Francis, identified another more fundamental problem, namely, "the virus of individualism."

The pontiff went on to say: "A variant of this virus is closed nationalism, which prevents, for example, an internationalism of vaccines. Another variant is when we put the laws of the market or of intellectual property over the laws of love and the health of humanity."

js/jlw (AFP, AP, Reuters)