Verbatim report of proceedings

Wednesday, 10 November 2021 - Brussels

An intellectual property action plan to support the EU’s recovery and resilience (short presentation)

  Mick Wallace (The Left). – Mr President, I was struck by a piece in the report which says that Parliament ‘stresses that a more equitable distribution of vaccines around the globe is essential for effectively combating the spread of COVID—19 and its mutations, and the need to support global access to COVID—19 vaccines; notes that the lack of access to affordable vaccines is still a major challenge in developing countries; supports, therefore, the Commission and the Member States in their efforts to push non—EU countries to lift current export bans and to step up the donation of vaccines’.

Listen, this is the pot calling the kettle black. Twenty—seven Member States of the EU had a meeting as to whether they would lift intellectual property rights to allow developing countries who couldn’t afford to pay Big Pharma for the vaccine, and 27 Member States voted against allowing them to get access to the intellectual rights and the knowledge to make them themselves.

Unfortunately, the EU has made the vaccine a racist issue. It has made it an apartheid issue. Lately, only a couple of weeks ago, a Malaysian badminton team went to Ireland and some of the players were told they couldn’t play because they’d had the Sinovac vaccine, even though the WHO recognises it. What is going on?