Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-11-30-Speech-3-177"
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"en.20051130.16.3-177"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, as the Commissioner said, my report seeks to implement the WTO General Council Decision of 30 August 2003. This Decision gives the WTO members, in application of paragraph 6 of the Doha Declaration on TRIPs, the option of granting compulsory licences for the production and sale of patented pharmaceutical products to countries with an acute public health problem and insufficient, or no, production capacity. It is just about the only agreement that the WTO members managed to reach in Cancún. My report aims to ensure that this WTO Decision is applied, by means of a European regulation, in a uniform manner in all EU Member States. In our Committee on International Trade, there was a large majority in favour of making considerable adjustments to the Commission’s original proposal. This consensus gave us a particularly strong negotiating position during the informal trialogue that was started without delay.
Particularly the British Presidency, with the WTO ministerial conference on the horizon – which I think gives them an excuse for not being here this evening – insisted on an agreement at first reading. Nearly all the proposals by the Committee on International Trade were eventually accepted thanks to the excellent cooperation with the shadow rapporteurs of the other political parties who have upheld Parliament’s viewpoints with much expertise and force, for which I am very grateful to them.
The key improvement to the Commission proposal is without a doubt the extension of the scope to include non-WTO members. From now on, all developing countries will, if necessary, be able to make use of the system. Moreover, NGOs and international organisations, such as the UN, will be entitled to submit their own applications for the import of medicines. It is, after all, often those organisations that distribute medicines in developing countries.
Furthermore, an accelerated and simplified procedure will be introduced to deal with demand for additional quantities, and I would thank Mr Arif who has played a key role in this. Additional applications will become possible if it transpires that the quantity of medicines initially allocated in the compulsory licence is insufficient to relieve the suffering.
Another important change is the scrapping of the requirement of prior negotiations with the patent holder in the case of a significant emergency situation arising or other situations of non-commercial or public use. As far as these prior negotiations are concerned, the Committee on International Trade has insisted on the period being specified more clearly as being a maximum of 30 days. This was eventually accepted by the Council, just as the concrete fleshing out of the notion of suitable remuneration that must be paid to the rightful claimants who will simply keep 4% of the total value of the product in question in the event of an emergency situation. In other cases, the economic value will be taken into consideration, but 4% will remain the benchmark.
The compromise entails a number of changes over against the original Commission proposal, and these were incorporated into amendments tabled both by me and by the shadow rapporteurs of the other groups. I hope that they will be adopted and that the agreement reached with the Council and Commission can be ratified. We will at any rate be able to say in Hong Kong that Europe has translated this important WTO Decision into a uniform regulation for the whole of the Union. This can only benefit our credibility in respect of the many needy in the developing countries and in the regions hit by natural disasters. It is in that spirit that I would like to urge my fellow Members to approve the amendments and thus to ratify the agreement that has been reached."@en1
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