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June 10, 2021 To accelerate the global deployment of Covid-19 vaccination, MEPs call for a temporary revocation of intellectual property rights protection. In a resolution adopted today with 355 yes, 263 against and 71 abstentions, the European Parliament calls for a temporary derogation from the 'Trips' agreement of the World Trade Organization, in order to improve global access to Covid-19 related medicines. affordable costs and to address world production constraints and supply shortages.



"Voluntary licensing (when the developer of a vaccine decides who and under what conditions the patent can be granted to allow its production) and transfers of know-how and technologies to countries with vaccine production capacity are the way forward to strengthen and accelerate production in the long term ", MEPs argue. To address production bottlenecks, MEPs ask the EU "to quickly remove obstacles to exports and replace its export authorization mechanism with export transparency requirements".



The US and UK should "immediately end the export ban on vaccines and raw materials," they say. 11 billion doses are needed to immunize 70% of the world's population and only a fraction of this amount has been produced. The EU must support production capacities on the African continent as only 0.3% of the vaccine doses administered worldwide (around 1.6 billion doses) have been delivered in the poorest 29 countries while most of them are has been administered in industrialized and vaccine-producing countries. 



The Covax Global Vaccine Distribution Mechanism is an important tool for MEPs calling for a significant increase in their financial and non-financial contributions. Finally, MEPs call on the EU to ensure that future pre-purchase agreements are fully disclosed, especially for next-generation vaccines, as well as including transparency requirements for suppliers.