EU leaders have a question for President Biden about waiving vaccine patents: So, how exactly is this going to go, Joe?
PORTO, Portugal — EU leaders have a question for the President of the United States about waiving vaccine patents: So, how exactly is this going to go, Joe?with his surprise proposal to suspend intellectual property rights, but at a European Council summit in Porto, Portugal, top EU officials pushed back hard, saying Washington has not put forward a specific plan and that, in the near term, waiving patents would not help with the immediate, urgent need to increase production in poorer countries.
Waiving patents, the French president said, should be fourth on the list of priorities. “If we want to work quickly, today there isn’t one factory in the world that can’t produce doses for poor countries because of intellectual property,” Macron said, arriving for the Saturday session of the summit. “The priority today is not intellectual property — it’s not true. We would be lying to ourselves. It’s production.
European leaders have been on the defensive since Biden’s announcement, which they view as a shrewd — and somewhat maddening— public relations maneuver., Biden upstaged Europe, first by announcing donations to India of millions of doses of AstraZeneca vaccine and then by reversing course and endorsing a patent waiver. India is a pharmaceutical manufacturing powerhouse and perhaps the country best positioned to capitalize on Biden’s plan.
Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said EU leaders did not need any lectures from Washington:"As Europeans, we don’t need to be schooled. The U.S. hasn’t exported a single vaccine in the past six months. Europe is the one that’s been producing for itself and the rest of the world these past six months.
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