The European Union agrees to discuss the exit of …

The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced on Thursday that the organization is “ready” to talk about the proposal publish patents for covid-19 vaccines, launched the day before by the Joe Biden government. In any case, he stressed that the priority must be to increase the global vaccine supply capacity.

“The EU is ready to discuss any proposal that responds to the crisis in an efficient and pragmatic way. And that is why we are ready to talk about how the lifting of intellectual property it can help achieve that goal, ”said von der Leyen.

The President of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, called the American announcement of support for the lifting of patents on anti-ovid vaccines “historic”.

So far, however, the EU has strongly opposed any initiative in this regard..

In his speech to an academic audience, Von der Leyen made a biased reference Criticism of countries that have obstructed global vaccine distribution, veto exports.

The official admitted that vaccination campaigns in the EU started with problems, “but I will say that Europe has managed to stay open to the world, while others have reserved their vaccine production for themselves“.

“Europe is the main exporter of vaccines in the world. So far, more than 200 million doses produced in Europe have been exported to the rest of the world,” he said, in an obvious reference to the UK and US itself.

“Europe exports as much vaccines as it distributes to its own population. And to be clear, Europe is the only democratic region in the world that exports vaccines on a large scale,” he said in an apparent reference to Russia and China. other major exporters.