EU to US: Push exports to counter vaccine shortage
PORTO (AP) – The European Union on Friday called on the United States to start boosting its vaccine exports to contain the global COVID-19 crisis, and said that the US backing of patent waivers would provide only a longterm solution at best.
“We invite all those who engage in the debate of a waiver for (intellectual property) rights also to join us to commit to be willing to export a large share of what is being produced in that region,” EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.
In the wake of the US backing calls to waive patents on vaccine technology, French President Emmanuel Macron summarized the view from Europe when he said at an EU summit in Porto, Portugal: “You can give the intellectual property to laboratories that do not know how to produce it. They won’t produce it tomorrow.”
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez gave the idea endorsed by US President Joe Biden this week a guarded welcome, but he immediately added, “We believe it is insufficient. It should be more ambitious.”
While the US has kept a tight lid on exports of American-made vaccines so it can inoculate its own population first, the EU has become the world’s leading provider, allowing about as many doses to go outside the 27-nation bloc as are kept for its 446 million inhabitants.
Many EU nations, however, have demanded a stop to vaccine nationalism and export bans.
Von der Leyen said any patent waiver “will not bring a single dose of vaccine in the short and medium term.”
Macron said it was more important for Biden to work on exports.
“The Anglo-Saxons block many of these ingredients” needed to make vaccines, the French leader said, referring to Washington and London.
“Today, 100 percent of vaccines produced in the United States of America are for the American market,” he added.
Von der Leyen this week said the EU had distributed about 200 million doses within the bloc while about the same amount had been exported abroad.
“Around 50 percent of what is being produced in Europe is exported to almost 90 countries,” she said, and called on Biden and other vaccineproducing regions or nations to step up their effort.
“We are the most generous in the world of developed nations. Europe should be proud of itself,” Macron said.
The EU is trying to regain the diplomatic initiative on vaccines after Biden put it on the back foot with his surprising endorsement of lifting patent protections on COVID-19 vaccines, seeking to solve the problem of getting shots into the arms of people in poorer countries.
EU leaders said they were ready to discuss the US backing for proposals first submitted to the World Trade Organization by India and South Africa, but they said many other initiatives would be more effective at this point, ranging from ramping up production capacity to distributing raw materials. So far, they insisted, the issue of waiving patents is not a big problem.