Inter Press Service - December 2, 2002
Farah Khan

Lamy on Monday ended a four-day, three country trip to Southern Africa with a mission to sell the European Union's support for the medicines talks and in order to "inject dynamism" into the Doha trade round, according to EU trip briefings.

But at the same time, the commissioner stonewalled criticism of European farm subsidies, telling critics that what the European Union did with its money was its business.

His core message was one of accessible healthcare. "I have a policy objective to have this problem (of cheaper medicines) resolved by the end of this year," said Lamy in Johannesburg as he ended his visit.

These negotiations relate to the progress of the Doha Declaration, the agreement, which launched the trade talks of the same name a year ago. In the Qatari capital, developing nation support for the launch was won on the success of changes to the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement to make it clear that healthcare took precedence over trade.

In terms of the agreement, the 140-odd member states of the WTO must by the end of Dec 2002 give substance to the agreement by making the relevant changes to TRIPS.

But, the agreement hangs by a thread.

Lamy's visit was focused on health with visits to clinics and HIV/Aids treatment centres in each of the three countries. The EU is keen to market its advocacy and support for the TRIPS agreement and Lamy also used the visit to signal the union's success in securing 600 million U.S. dollars in trade-related aid for developing countries. About 150 million U.S. dollars is earmarked for the Africa-Caribbean-Pacific partners of the European Union.

Political intervention could yield a solution to the delay in the TRIPS agreement, said Lamy.

This would allow a greater number of developing countries to manufacture and/or import generic copies of patented drugs as well as issue compulsory licences on patented drugs, all of which have the function of lowering the prices of life-saving drugs.

He said that good progress had been notched up at a WTO meeting in Sydney, Australia last month, but the challenge now lay with finding legal text that suited all member states.

"We solved two-thirds of the problem with the Doha declaration," said Lamy. "One specific topic needs legal text change and that is the law that provides you can have recourse to compulsory licencing at home and for the domestic market. Now, obviously, many developing countries cannot abide by this wording because they don't have domestic capacity.

"Of course, we reached a basic political agreement in Sydney, but the moment you have to enter into the text of the agreement, every word is terribly important," he said.

One of the issues hampering progress is an attempt by countries with big pharmaceutical company headquarters like Switzerland the United States to sub-categorise developing countries by income, thereby limiting access to the new medicines laws.

But Lamy made it clear that the extent of infectious diseases, like HIV/Aids, tuberculosis and malaria should be as much a determining factor as income levels. This is good news for South Africa, whose classification as a middle-income country threatened loss of TRIPS benefits.

But while South African chief trade negotiator Xavier Carrim welcomed commitments to the access to medicines, he said that agricultural subsidies were a cause for "grave and widespread" concern.

"Agriculture is probably the most important negotiation issue for most countries," said Carim, citing World Bank research which shows that access to agricultural markets of the rich countries is worth more than aid to developing countries with agricultural export potential.

Lamy retorted that European subsidies were a domestic issue and that reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) through which the EU supports its farmers had made it "much more trade and development friendly than it was 10 years ago".

Stressing his view that "Southern Africa already has large market access to the EU", Lamy added that CAP reforms offered small opportunities for sugar and beef farmers.

He added that, "the EU imports more from developing countries than the United States, Japan, Australia and New Zealand together." (END/IPS/AF/IF/FK/MN/02)

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