World Trade Organization (WTO) members said that the outcome document emerging from the informal process conducted with the Quad (European Union, India, South Africa and the United States) opens the prospect for text-based negotiations on an intellectual property response to COVID-19.
At a General Council meeting on 10 May, members welcomed the proposal as a positive development and thanked Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Deputy Director-General Anabel González, as well as the four members of the Quad, for their efforts in trying to find a way forward on this long-standing issue.
DG Okonjo-Iweala thanked delegations for the "constructive spirit" shown during the General Council meeting.
"Everyone is ready to pitch in together to get an outcome based on this," she said. "To me, it's pretty amazing. There's a lot of work still to be done, but I think if we put our minds to it, we can do it."
Following an impasse of more than a year in the Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), the text was forwarded by DG Okonjo-Iweala and shared immediately by TRIPS Council Chair Ambassador Lansana Gberie (Sierra Leone) with all delegations, who had the opportunity to express their initial views about the proposal at a formal meeting on the TRIPS Council on 6 May.
In their discussions facilitated by DG Okonjo-Iweala and working with Deputy Director-General Anabel González, the Quad adopted a problem-solving approach aimed at identifying practical ways to clarify, streamline and simplify how governments can override patent rights, under certain conditions, to enable diversification of production of COVID-19 vaccines.
While acknowledging that the proposal sets out a solid basis for further discussion and could lead to a long-awaited and urgently needed outcome, many delegations said more time was needed to review the document internally before they could engage in substantive discussions. Some members noted that further engagement is needed to assess specific issues, such as which members are eligible to benefit from the new proposal.
China announced at the meeting that it will not avail itself of the flexibilities under the Quad waiver text provided that language is used opening benefits of the waiver to all developing members while encouraging those with capacity to export vaccines to opt out. China and several other members rejected a second option in the text that would restrict waiver eligibility to those developing countries that exported more than 10 per cent of the world’s vaccine doses in 2021.
