BRAZIL SAYS READY TO SHARE AIDS DRUGS & TECHNOLOGY
At the opening of the 14th UN AIDS Conference in Barcelona on 8 July, Brazil announced that it was moving ahead with a plan to help other developing countries build their own manufacturing capacity to produce generic AIDS drugs. Speaking at the Conference (see http://www.unaids.org/) — where 15,000 representatives of government, international bodies, pharmaceutical companies and civil society are meeting to discuss the worsening epidemic — Brazil said it would spend USD 1 million per year to donate generic drugs as well as pass along requisite technology and know-how to ten projects in the developing world. Paulo Teixeira, the head of Brazil’s HIV programme, attributed his country’s ability to take this step in part to the flexibilities reaffirmed in the WTO Doha Declaration on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) and Public Health (see BRIDGES Weekly, 12 March 2002). It is currently estimated that only four percent of the six million AIDS sufferers have access to anti-retroviral drugs — with approximately half of those recipients in Brazil. Brazil is in a position to make such an offer because of its robust generics industry, combined with the fact that 15 of these drugs were in production prior to the government’s passing of a patent protection law in 1997. Some experts speculate that it is in fact this very arrangement, combined with the Doha TRIPs Declaration, that makes it possible for Brazil to move ahead with this initiative. Importing developing countries, where a patent already exists for the drug in question, will still have to wait for the conclusion of the ongoing discussions at the WTO’s TRIPs Council on how to deal with compulsory licensing for those without the capacity for a domestic generics industry before being able to participate (see BRIDGES Weekly, 3 July 2002).
ICTSD reporting; "Brazil Set To Help Countries Copy AIDS Drugs," FT, 8 July 2002; "Brazil Offers To Share Its Generic AIDS Drugs," DOW JONES, 9 July 2002.
EU-ACP MEETING EXPOSES DIFFERENCES
On 4 July, delegates from the EU and from former European colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific failed to bridge differences over trade policies at a meeting in the Dominican Republic (see BRIDGES Weekly, 3 July 2002). Ahead of the commencement of negotiations on Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) in September, the ACP and the EU seem to be on the brink of a major disagreement. At issue is the loss the 78 ACP countries could face as they lose preferential market access to the EU that has been in place pursuant to the EU-ACP Lomé Agreements. In accordance with Article 37 (5) of the EU-ACP Agreement, signed in Cotonou in June 2000, negotiations on EPAs will be undertaken with those countries that consider themselves ready to do so and at a level they consider appropriate. The stated purpose of EPAs, according to the negotiations mandate, is "to develop a stable, predictable and transparent framework for economic and trade relations between the ACP and the EU". Under the requisite free trade arrangements, both parties would agree to cut tariffs on imports. The tariffs in place so far have made it easier for ACP countries to export to the EU than for the EU to export to the ACP region. ACP delegates were adamant about the importance of the principle of special and differentiated treatment for the ACP, which according to the President of the Dominican Republic is "a logical and justified consequence of the different levels of development between the ACP group and the EU". According to the ACP, "development and not commerce must be the priority".
"EU-ACP Meet Fails to Bridge Divide," IPS, 4 Jul 2002; "New strategy for partnerships with African, Caribbean and Pacific countries," EU PRESS RELEASE, 9 April 2002; "European Communities - transitional regime for the EC autonomous tariff rate quotas on imports of bananas," Decision of 14 November 2001 (WT/MIN (01)/16).