PORTO (Reuters) – Emmanuel Macron on Saturday called on the United States to lift export bans on COVID-19 vaccines and their ingredients, deeming such a measure a priority over a lifting of patents defended by his counterpart American Joe Biden.
Saying his refusal to be drawn into “false debates”, the French president reiterated that this lifting of export restrictions, technology transfers to allow the manufacture of vaccines everywhere in the world and the donation of doses would guarantee a faster greater access to vaccines, especially in poor countries, than the lifting of patents.
While Joe Biden’s proposal was widely hailed as a gesture of international solidarity, Emmanuel Macron, who spoke at the end of a European social summit in Porto, affirmed that, unlike the United States or the Great Britain, the European Union had exported half of the doses of vaccines produced on its territory.
“We did not proceed like the Americans, who kept everything they produced for themselves,” said the head of state. “We were more generous than all the others put together. (…) If I compare the European Union, the British, the Americans, we are by far the ones who have exported the most doses produced on our continent.”
“The proposal that is made (on patents-Editor’s note) is quite relevant for the times to come but it does not respond to the problems we have today. That is wrong,” he insisted.
“We must therefore work to ensure that this vaccine is a global public good (…) and therefore I call very clearly on the United States of America to end the export bans not only of vaccines but of components of these vaccines that prevent production, “said Emmanuel Macron, citing the example of the German laboratory CureVac which, according to him, claims not to be able to produce because of components blocked in the United States.
“The key to producing vaccines faster for all poor and middle-income countries is to produce more. Lift export bans (…) on ingredients and vaccines.”
(Reuters editorial staff, with Bertrand Boucey in Paris)
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