Every day almost 10,000 people are dying of Covid-19*. Every day the European Commission says “it’s not the time to talk about lifting patents”, lives are being lost. Inaction is killing people. We don’t have time for petty tactics to delay a much needed European Parliament vote on a TRIPS waiver to enable the sharing of intellectual property rights on Covid-19 vaccines, treatments and diagnostics.
Today, we witnessed yet another outrageous delay from the EU on access to vaccines in Parliament’s Conference of Presidents of political groups. The Left – together with the Greens and S&D – demanded a debate and vote on the TRIPS waiver in next week’s plenary session. While the debate will finally go ahead on Wednesday 19th May , the vote (the only way Parliament can take a position on this) was pushed back to June by the Renew, ECR and EPP groups.