Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-11-30-Speech-4-014"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20061130.4.4-014"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the Commissioner’s speech sounds frankly rhetorical: it is full of fine statements, which are not matched by an equally positive role on the part of the European Commission. As the latest data from UNAIDS demonstrate, the number of HIV infections is continuing to grow and, in some countries, we are even seeing a fresh outbreak of the virus. Faced with all of this, patented drugs continue to be unaffordable, and the TRIPS agreements are creating an insurmountable obstacle to access to medicines, condemning almost three million people to death each year.
The ones taking advantage of this situation are the multinational pharmaceutical companies, which recorded a 24% increase in their profits in 2005; these multinationals are protected by the US Administration, which has never stopped using its political and commercial weight to influence the negotiations on pharmaceutical patents. At multilateral level, the Bush administration’s agenda is aimed at making the safeguard clauses laid down by the TRIPS agreements unenforceable, clauses which, in the event of a health crisis, would allow the member countries to bypass intellectual property rights and to have access to lifesaving drugs.
However, while the United States can be rightly accused of attacking one of the most basic human rights, that of health care, Europe certainly cannot consider itself blameless. The inertia shown by the Commission and the Member States when it comes to equipping themselves with a Community regulation that is genuinely able to implement the Doha Declaration must be well and truly condemned. Commissioner, you said that a few thousand Africans were receiving treatment, but, in Africa, 30 million people are HIV-positive, 6.5 million of whom require treatment. Tomorrow is World AIDS Day: global civil society is asking once and for all for politics to shoulder its responsibilities, which concern not only the issue of access to medicines but also the funding allocated to prevention and research programmes. The creation of an international market in generic medicines, supported by a new system of medical research geared towards people’s real needs, remains the crucial issue.
For this reason, we in the Confederal Group of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left believe that it is crucial for the resolution on which the House will vote to commit the Commission and the Council to: 1) acknowledge the failure of the decision of 30 August 2003; 2) propose within the WTO to amend the TRIPS agreements and the new procedures for granting compulsory licences, which must be able to respond swiftly to health emergencies caused by the HIV epidemic; 3) allocate EUR 1 billion to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, as was already requested by Parliament on 2 December 2004 and ignored by the Commission and the Council; 4) dedicate more resources to research into medicines designed to treat diseases specifically affecting the south of the world and oblige the private sector, which has always benefited from public research, to set aside a reasonable amount of its own research for these neglected diseases. Too much time and energy has been wasted on making false promises; it is now time to act!"@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples