Activities of Michèle RIVASI related to 2021/2007(INI)
Shadow opinions (1)
OPINION on an intellectual property action plan to support the EU’s recovery and resilience
Amendments (24)
Amendment 1 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. WelcomesTakes note of the communication on an intellectual property action plan to support the EU’s recovery and resilience, but regrets that the focus on international cooperation and assistance to developing countries is poorly addressedonly addressed through the lens of technical cooperation programmes, with a view to promoting better generation and management of intellectual property (IP); deplores that it fails to address explicitly the need to promote technology transfer, notably to fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change, which is of primary importance for developing countries, notably LDCs and low and middle-income countries;
Amendment 3 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 a (new)
Paragraph 1 a (new)
1 a. Highlights that, according to UNCTAD, while developed countries have been able to mobilise massively their monetary and fiscal resources to prop up their economy (estimated at between 20 and 25% of their GDP), the poorest countries have mobilised just 1% to mitigate the socio-economic damage caused by the pandemic crisis[1];emphasises that a diversified economy is a prerequisite for resilience to future shocks;underlines that the main barriers to the industrial upgrading of developing countries are production capacity constraints such as access to technology; [1] “Reforming the International Trading System for Recovery, Resilience and Inclusive Development”, UNCTAD Research Paper (n°65) of April 2021, p. 3.
Amendment 4 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. CRecalls onthat the Commission to continue strengthening intellectual property rights (post-pandemic global recovery should be aligned with international commitments on climate change and Agenda 2030; accordingly, believes that the global green transition requires a balance between the rules on IPR) protection and enforcement in non-EU countries through EU-funded technical cooperation programmes; welcomes in particular the intention to promote better generation and management of intellectual property (IP) on the African continent as part of a joint partnership building on the current four- year cooperation programme for Africatechnology transfer; recalls the previous efforts in UNCTAD to develop a Cod eof Conduct on Technology Transfer;calls on the EU and its Member States to take initiatives to reinvigorate it; but urges the Commission to refrain from harnessing IP chapters in the context of FTA (FTAs), without addressing the concerns of LDCs and low and middle income countries in terms of technology transfer;
Amendment 12 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 a (new)
Paragraph 2 a (new)
2 a. Recalls that one of the main challenges for developing countries is to climb up the global value chain through economic diversification, which necessitates fair and pro-development global trade rules;
Amendment 14 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 b (new)
Paragraph 2 b (new)
2 b. Recalls that, while the Special and Differentiated Treatment of the WTO is meant to safeguard the policy space of developing countries to better align their trade policy with their developmental priorities, it has been insufficient to enable their economic diversification;
Amendment 15 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 c (new)
Paragraph 2 c (new)
2 c. Points out that developing countries’ obligations under TRIPS are enforceable and can be challenged under the dispute settlement mechanism, while their rights to technology transfer are not enforceable; underlines that such asymmetry of rules is not coherent with the fulfilment of the Agenda 2030;
Amendment 18 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Strongly encourages the Commission to assist producers and their associations as well as local authorities in developing countries in unlocking the potential of IP and reaping the economic value of local innovations, geographical indications and traditional knowledge; reiterates its call, in this regard, to respect the progress achieved in the international protection of indigenous peoples’ rights over their genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge; more broadly, calls on the EU and its Member States to support regional projects such as the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, which should favour products of local enterprises and in this way support regional industrialisation processes;
Amendment 30 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4 a (new)
Paragraph 4 a (new)
4 a. Stresses that a more equitable distribution of vaccines around the globe is essential to combat effectively the spread of COVID-19 and its mutations; recalls that, while COVAX, the vaccine pillar of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Access to Covid-19 Tools (ACT) is aiming to have two billion vaccine doses available by the end of 2021, it will neither be enough to respond to the vaccination needs of the poorest countries to reach herd immunity, nor does it constitute an appropriate integrated global approach for scaling up production capacities worldwide;
Amendment 32 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4 b (new)
Paragraph 4 b (new)
4 b. Recalls that the current multilateral framework protecting intellectual property rights has represented an obstacle for addressing the COVID-19 crisis and that the existing WTO-TRIPS flexibilities which are based on procedurally complex, country-by- country, product-by-product and prior negotiations with patent holders, were not fit for purpose for tackling previous global health emergencies and are not up to the challenge of the current one;
Amendment 33 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4 c (new)
Paragraph 4 c (new)
4 c. Points out, furthermore, that past experience regarding the implementation of existing TRIPS flexibilities shows that individual countries often felt fearful of either retaliatory action by developed countries or the reputational costs of issuing compulsory licenses; underlines that compulsory licensing only applies to patents as one category of intellectual property rights (IPR), but that other IPR categories, such as data protection and trade secrets, which represent potential hurdles to the scaling-up of production of needed medical products, are beyond the scope of compulsory licences;
Amendment 35 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5
Paragraph 5
5. Welcomes, as a positive step, the recently announced US support for a proposal the declarations of WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo- Iweala at the meeting of Parliament’s Committee on International Trade of 20 May 2021, according to which the existing TRIPS flexibilities are too temporarily waive certain provburdensome and more flexibility is needed; welcomes, in this context, the decisions of the Agreement on Trade- Related AspectsBiden- Harris Administration in the US to support the waiving of Iintellectual Pproperty Rights for the prevention, containment and treatment of COVID-19; urges the Commission, therefore, to follow through on its promise to engage in aprotections for COVID-19 vaccines; recalls the declaration of President Von Der Leyen according to which COVID-19 vaccines should be considered a global public good; accordingly, urges the EU to constructively and constructiveproactively engage in text-based negotiations at World Trade Organization level.for a temporary TRIPS waiver for all products and technologies including vaccines, treatments and diagnostics needed to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and to issue, with that purpose, a negotiation mandate;
Amendment 42 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 a (new)
Paragraph 5 a (new)
5 a. Urges the EU to forswear any recourse to legal proceedings in the WTO or under free trade and investment agreements against countries that infringe TRIPS provisions when adopting policy measures to expand access to COVID-19 related medical products; requests the Commission, therefore, to propose, as an interim measure before agreeing on a COVID-19 related TRIPS waiver, an immediate WTO political declaration on a ‘standstill’ regarding any action relating to vaccines and other essential medical products to tackle the pandemic;
Amendment 46 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 b (new)
Paragraph 5 b (new)
5 b. Insists upon the need to support global open access to COVID-19 vaccines to scale up global production through technology transfer; underlines that the Commission has so far solely focused on encouraging Western vaccine manufacturers to share technology and licences on a purely voluntary basis; notes with concern that there is evidence that current producers of authorised COVID- 19 vaccines have refused offers to expand production from several potential generic pharmaceutical producers in the EU and abroad;
Amendment 48 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 c (new)
Paragraph 5 c (new)
5 c. Calls for binding technology transfers to scale up vaccine production; urges the Commission to take initiatives along this line and to proactively undertake efforts to make sure that vaccine manufacturers share IP and technology through the WHO C-TAP multilateral mechanism, particularly in low and middle-income countries;
Amendment 50 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 d (new)
Paragraph 5 d (new)
5 d. Is of the opinion that the EU should urgently foster multilateral arrangements at WTO level, including a treaty on pandemics, as recently proposed by the President of the European Council, as part of the ‘Health and Trade Initiative’ to be adopted in November 2021 during the twelfth Ministerial Conference, as well as at the next WHO general assembly; underlines that this initiative is a complement to and not a substitute for a TRIPS waiver;
Amendment 52 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 e (new)
Paragraph 5 e (new)
5 e. Encourages developing countries to strengthen regional value chains and intra-regional trade and investments in health and health related areas, notably through collective R&D efforts in medical research and regional pooling of resources;notes with concern that, according to the Global Trade Alert, as of 21 March 2021, 54 governments introduced export curbs on key medical supplies since the beginning of the year[1];stresses that regional trade pacts should be used to prevent export bans on key products in times of global and regional shortages, as in the case of the ongoing pandemic crisis; [1] “Reforming the International Trading System for Recovery, Resilience and Inclusive Development”, UNCTAD Research Paper (n°65) of April 2021, p. 20.
Amendment 53 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 f (new)
Paragraph 5 f (new)
5 f. Takes note of the Commission’s intention to evaluate and revise the Community Plant Variety Rights (CPRV); recalls the EU’s commitments to implement the Agenda 2030 and its objective to leave no one behind; stresses that Small-scale farmers (SSF)and agricultural biodiversity are critical to achieving the SDGs; accordingly, stresses the need to support a rights-based approach to implement the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas adopted by the United Nations General Assembly at its 73rd Session in December 2018;
Amendment 54 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 g (new)
Paragraph 5 g (new)
5 g. Highlights that small-scale farmers (SSF) and agricultural biodiversity have a critical role in healthy, nutritious diets and ensuring the resilience of agricultural production systems to cope with climate change; recalls equally that seed diversity is vital in building the resilience of farming to climate change; notes with concern that trade and Intellectual Property rules protecting plants, genetic information and biological process in the remit of TRIPS and the Union for Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV 1991) have a detrimental effect on SSF innovation and agricultural biodiversity, although being critical to supporting food and nutrition security;
Amendment 55 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 h (new)
Paragraph 5 h (new)
5 h. Recalls that farm-saved seeds are estimated to account for over 80% of farmers’ total seed requirements in some African countries; calls for the EU to support intellectual property rights regimes that enhance the development of locally adapted seed varieties and farmer- saved seeds, in line with the provisions of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), which safeguards the rights of farmers to maintain genetic resources for purposes of food security and climate change adaptation, and Article 19 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas, according to which peasants have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their own seeds and traditional knowledge;
Amendment 56 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 i (new)
Paragraph 5 i (new)
5 i. Stresses that, while green technologies are predominantly held and protected by corporations of developed countries, the TRIPS Agreement and TRIPS Plus hamper the green technological upgrading in developing countries that must accompany any climate-friendly industrialisation process;
Amendment 57 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 j (new)
Paragraph 5 j (new)
5 j. Stresses the need for coherence between the special and differential treatment (SDT) of the WTO and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities”;
Amendment 58 #
5 k. Calls on the EU to take the lead in the identification of the salient barriers to the dissemination of technologies in developing countries to address climate change and to strive to promote the adoption of a Declaration on “IPR and Climate Change” comparable to the Doha Declaration of 2001 on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health, to foster the legal transfer of climate-friendly technology in developing countries, in compliance with the Paris Agreement and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), notably the principle of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR);along this line, takes the view that EU FTAs with developing countries should include provisions that promote technology transfer and enable Local Content Requirements in their public procurement and investment policies;
Amendment 59 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 l (new)
Paragraph 5 l (new)
5 l. Stresses the need to account for the carbon “embodied” in imported goods and services; acknowledges, however, the adverse impact of Border Carbon Adjustment (BCA) on developing countries locked into carbon-intensive and extractive industrialisation;
Amendment 60 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 m (new)
Paragraph 5 m (new)
5 m. Stresses that Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States should be given special treatment in order to take account of their specificities and the potential negative impact of the carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) on their development; in light of this, insists that such initiative should be in line with the special and differential treatment (SDT) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” and accompanied by measures facilitating technology transfer both for climate adaptation and mitigation, to accommodate the needs of developing countries; to this end, stresses the need to develop are distributive mechanism that redirects new tariff revenue to ringfence financing for green transitions in developing countries, additional to ODA, to undergo an industrialisation process based on clean and decarbonised technologies;